Life Is The Dance
by StarstruckLily
Summary: Clint hadn't planned on falling in love in New Mexico- but that was before he became personally responsible for Darcy Lewis. Contains spoilers for Avengers.
1. Chapter 1

AN: Alternate title for this fic is "The Drabble That Got Away." I had some downtime at work and started writing something fluffy about Clint and Darcy watching movies together, and I wound up with 60 pages in word and a story that goes from immediately post-Thor to years after Avengers.

Please note that there are still some movie-watching scenes which may contain spoilers for those films. I'll name the movies at the beginning of the chapter, along with any plot/character information that you need to know, in case you haven't seen something but still want to fully understand the chapter. (All the movies referenced are quite popular so I would anticipate that most of you have already seen all of them.)

Categorically, I wasn't sure where to post this, since it spans such a broad timeframe and contains characters from all the Marvel movies and the site doesn't have an "Avengers 'Verse" tag. I basically consider this a Thor fic because of the Darcy focus, but it **contains major spoilers for Avengers (and minor for the other Marvel films).**

Rated for eventual language and sexual content (nothing too explicit, because I fail at writing smut).

* * *

_Clint hadn't planned on falling in love in New Mexico._

_It was almost time for his annual leave, the little bit of time granted to all the agents to clear their heads and pretend to be normal. As Tony would later put it, it was mandated from on high to ensure that they didn't go even more bat-shit insane._

_He and Natasha had just come off a long, frustrating mission. His head wasn't in the game, and Fury knew it. He probably should have been chewed out, but Fury just shook his head and put him on a guard detail. At first, Clint thought it was some kind of demotion, but when he made it out to the temporary base and heard about the planned requisition of all of Dr. Foster's equipment, he got the sense that a little more was going on._

_Still, this was a pretty simple job, as far as his duties were concerned. No investigations, no undercover. All he had to do was hang around the base and make sure that there was no unauthorized access. SHIELD agents generally avoided drawing excess attention to themselves, which meant that they hadn't gone into the town or met any of the locals._

_Clint hadn't planned on falling in love in New Mexico._

_But that was before Gods started dropping out of the sky, complete with something called the Destroyer that blew most of the town to hell. It was before the tesseract became the key to SHIELD developing the capacity to fight off future invasions. It was before a trio of civilians were suddenly in grave danger because of their knowledge about the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. It was before his top priority became protecting those civilians, at any cost._

_In short, it was before he became personally responsible for Darcy Lewis._

* * *

"Are you _fucking _kidding me?" Darcy shrieked.

Jane and Erik, used to her outbursts, ignored her. The jackbooted thugs (as they were now exclusively called by the research team) looked shocked. One of them tried unsuccessfully to stop her as she shoved her way through the boxes to where Coulson was talking on a cell phone.

"Where's my iPod?"

Coulson gave her the 'one minute' finger. "No, sir, nothing is wrong."

"Something is too wrong! You stole my iPod!"

Coulson turned his back on her, resulting in Darcy scrambling around to his other side. "I want my iPod!" Each word was punctuated by a finger poking into the center of his chest. The agents surrounding Coulson looked uneasy. Technically, non-SHIELD personnel touching him (especially when paired with deranged shrieking) constituted a threat- but somehow having to fill out an incident report for restraining a college student freaking out about an iPod seemed a little ridiculous.

Coulson wrapped up his call and raised an eyebrow at her. "Yes, Miss Lewis?"

"Don't play dumb," she growled. "You said we were getting everything back. My iPod is still missing. Where is it?"

"I really have no idea."

Darcy spluttered. "What- of course you do, all of this other shit is perfectly catalogued, how could you _possibly _not know where something is?"

"Miss Lewis, I don't know what exactly you think it is that I do, but I did not personally compile the equipment manifests. You need to talk to someone in Acquisitions."

Darcy closed her eyes and counted to ten. "And where, may I ask, would I find Acquisitions?"

"Barton!" Coulson beckoned over one of the jackbooted thugs. "Please escort Miss Lewis to Acquisitions. She needs to speak with someone about a missing item. I believe Morrisson or Jones should have the information." A slight tilt of the head and an eyebrow movement silently indicated 'Keep an eye on her.'

"Yes, sir. This way, ma'am."

Darcy looked like she was about to start yelling again when the agent- Bolton?- started walking away without even saying hello to her. Coulson was already back on his phone, so she decided to take it up with her new guide.

"Um, manners much?" She huffed. The agent's pace slowed slightly as he gave her a bemused look.

"Something wrong?"

"How about everything? Erik's spazzing out, Jane is so lovesick that she can't focus for more than thirty seconds, our equipment is all over the place, we're so far out in the middle of nowhere that I can't find my favorite shampoo, my space is being invaded by the freaking secret police, and you fuckers stole my iPod!"

The agent looked like he was suppressing an urge to laugh. "We're not the secret police, ma'am. And I promise that I will find your iPod." One side of his mouth crooked up into a smile. "If you have good taste in music, I'll even see about getting you some speakers for the lab."

Darcy gave him a considering look. "What's in it for you?"

"I'm hoping for a truce," he said. "It looks like we're going to be working together for a while, and you obviously don't have a very high opinion of SHIELD. I'd like to try to fix that."

Darcy shrugged. She was still mad about the whole fiasco, but she was also not the type to turn down bribery-related peace offerings. "Coolio. I'm Darcy, by the way. I'm the minion. Sometimes I do helpful things like drive the van, or data entry, but mostly I'm in charge of the coffee pot and making sure that Jane remembers to eat."

The agent smiled- a real smile, that time- and offered her his hand. "Clint Barton. SHIELD agent. I do a lot of different things, but my primary mission right now is to keep you safe."

Darcy looked a little suspicious, but took his hand anyway, her expression quickly becoming one of surprise. "Holy callouses, dude. Do you work construction in your spare time?"

"How do you think that scaffolding got put up?" he asked. "Also, keeping people safe does occasionally include some... hard labor."

"If you say so, Clint. Can I call you Clint? I'm probably going to call you Clint no matter what you say, but I like to give men the illusion of control."

"Clint's fine."

They approached a small cluster of tents arranged in a horseshoe, with the entrance guarded by two agents with sunglasses and M-4s. The taller of the two didn't move; the other one asked Clint for his ID. Darcy was tempted to start dancing like a moron in front of the tall one the way she had when she was in London and saw the Queen's Guard. Clint took her elbow and guided her through the checkpoint before she had the chance.

Under normal circumstances she might have been annoyed about an almost-stranger touching her, but no lie: SHIELD was intimidating. They were completely surrounded by agents who seemed to be coordinating some sort of project. The computers looked to be pretty far ahead of the technology available on the market, the agents were all super cut, and most of them were carrying some sort of weapon. Her taser was back at her desk. Clint's mission to keep her safe suddenly seemed like the only thing between her and a mysterious disappearance, and she moved a little closer to his side as they passed a tent marked as the weapons cache.

She was doing a great job looking calm and collected- or so she thought- until his warm breath in her ear made her jump. "No one here is going to hurt you, you know."

"Yeah, sure. If you say so."

"Darcy." He tugged on her arm, making her stop to turn to face him. "I know that this week has been confusing and frustrating, but I need you to understand something. You, Dr. Foster, and Dr. Selvig are under the protection of SHIELD. Anyone in this compound would die to defend you. It's okay if you don't like us, and you are absolutely going to get annoyed about the extra security measures, but you need to be able to act natural when your detail is around. A lot of lives could depend on it."

Darcy felt a little light-headed. "Is this rainbow bridge thingy actually that important? I mean-" she hesitated, looking up through her lashes to meet his gaze. "No one's actually going to try to hurt me, right?"

Clint's hands tightened on her upper arms, anchoring her to the present. "I don't know. That's why I'm here. So that if someone does try, I can stop them." Darcy did not look reassured, and Clint quirked his half-smile at her again. "Don't you trust me?"

Darcy blinked. "Dude, you're part of a secret government agency that has taken control of my internship and is probably going to wiretap me for the rest of my life. Of course I don't trust you. Although," she gave him a considering look, "you look like you'd be pretty handy in a fight."

"Well, it's a start." He released his grip on her and lightly hooked an arm around her shoulders. "Let's go find your iPod."

* * *

Apparently, convincing someone who worked in Acquisitions (or maybe someone who worked for SHIELD in general) that they had made a mistake was not easy. Darcy spent the rest of the afternoon describing and re-describing her missing iPod while the agents shuffled through papers, occasionally poking through one of the storage crates. Clint slowly wandered through the tent. Darcy wanted to kick herself for being glad that he never left her line of sight.

She was in the middle of telling the guy with the lopsided ears about the scratch on the bottom left corner when Clint cleared his throat. "This it?"

Darcy scurried to the back of the tent, ignoring the protests from whats-his-face about how she wasn't supposed to go back there. "Dude! This is it!" She quickly flipped through the menu, delighted to see that everything seemed to be working. "Clint, you completely rock!"

He smiled, taking the iPod back from her. "Good to know." His smile grew as he scrolled through her artist list. "Yeah, we're definitely getting you some speakers."

Darcy grinned back. "Score."

* * *

By the time they made it back to the lab it was growing dark, and Darcy insisted on stopping for take-out at the diner. It was operating under a severely limited menu thanks to the Huge Metal Thingy, but it still had more food options than they would in the RV.

Of course, it looked like they were no longer staying in the RV. In the time that Darcy and Clint had been away on Mission iPod, the agents had finagled what looked like re-purposed FEMA trailers up against the side of the lab. When Darcy bounced up the steps, she discovered that the trailers functioned sort of like the tents in Harry Potter- normal looking on the outside (probably to deflect attention from the mystery enemies), but swanky on the inside.

Darcy wheeled around to discover that Clint had followed her up into the apartment. "We're seriously staying here?"

"Seriously," he confirmed. I think your room is the one in the back." Darcy immediately took off down the hallway, with Clint calling after her. "I should warn you, though- at least one of us is going to be in here with you at all times, so some of your privacy is gone."

"Eh, I have a bed now, so I'm going to call that one an even trade." Darcy looked around her new room. It was pretty small, but bigger than the dorm rooms she had lived in at university. It looked like all of her belongings had been moved over, although whoever had been in charge of her clothes had no idea how to organize a closet. Probably a guy... or possibly Jane. As she began shuffling her dresses around she vaguely noticed a conversation back in the living room, between Clint and... Coulson? She lost track of the time as she became absorbed in making the space a little more her, shoving the desk around so it faced out the window, spreading her obnoxiously bright tie-dye blanket over the bed, and arranging her collection of scarves on the hooks on the back of the door. By the time she finished it was fully dark out, but the trailer felt kind of like home.

She went back out to the living room to find Jane talking to Coulson, both looking far more animated than they had that morning. Coulson even smiled at her! "All settled in?"

"Yeah. Thanks for, you know, moving my stuff. And helping to get my iPod back," she added.

Coulson inclined his head slightly. "And you?" he asked of someone evidently behind Darcy. She whirled around, expecting to see a ghost in the empty hallway, but instead came face-to-chest with Clint.

"Wait, what?" Darcy's brain was suddenly processing the various other moving sounds that had been going on in the improvised house while she was alphabetizing her DVDs. "Are you staying here?"

"Agent Barton is our personal guard detail," Jane offered. "The others will be around, but we're trying to stay inconspicuous. So he's pretending to be another intern, so that he can stay close to us, and everyone else will be on the roof, or something."

Darcy considered the arrangement. Having a guard detail still seemed weird, but if she only had to interact with one of them, and that one was a guy who seemed mostly okay, it could be bearable. "All right. But I'm head intern!"

"Of course." Jane rolled her eyes. "Who else could get the right kinds of Pop Tarts?"

* * *

AN: Regarding updates, the whole thing is written and just needs editing (ten chapters total, plus an epilogue). The later chapters need some fleshing out, but in total I still plan on getting the whole thing up within the next two weeks, max.

As always, reviews are appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed the first section!

Regarding some confusion about where to post this: I know there is an Avengers section, as well as a crossover option, but what I would really love is an overall Marvel Universe tag. (AO3 has one, but there's like a three year waiting list for an account so apparently I won't be posting there for a while, haha.)

Movies referenced: Beauty and the Beast and Inception. Beauty and the Beast is an animated Disney princess musical from the early 90s. It's about a guy who gets turned into a beast and the girl who can see past his ugly exterior and falls in love with him anyway. Inception is super complicated, but all you need to know for this story is that it's about people who can go inside other people's dreams.

* * *

The next few days were actually pretty normal- or, as normal as a day could be when you were trying to build a bridge to another world while being guarded by a top-secret organization from some mystery threat that no one would tell you about.

Fortunately, Darcy was adaptable.

The strangest part had been adjusting to Clint's presence. She'd gotten sort of used to it before, when he was nothing more than the strong, mostly-silent soldier guiding her through the desert. She hadn't quite realized that his cover as an intern meant that he would be wearing normal clothes. So, when he appeared in the kitchen the first morning in jeans and an AC/DC t-shirt, she swallowed. Hard.

How was she supposed to concentrate on the freaking rainbow bridge when he was parading around with those arms and that ass? Honestly.

She dawdled over her coffee, feeling rather self-conscious about the fact that she was still in her ratty pajamas, trying not to stare at the way his arms eventually crossed over his chest as he leaned against the counter. She kept stealing glances at him, but he seemed to be lost in thought, staring at the far corner of the ceiling. Probably figuring out an escape route or something.

"So..." Darcy began, striving for nonchalance. "Shouldn't you be over in the lab? Interning?"

"Shouldn't you?" Clint raised an eyebrow. "The rest of the team has better incognito access to the lab, so I'm primary on the residence. I'll go to the lab when you do."

"Oh. Um, okay. Give me a minute to get dressed." Resigned to the inevitable, she abandoned the table and scurried back into her room. She spent a minute wondering if there were hidden cameras, then realized that if there were, there was nothing she could do about it. She made up some time by not even bothering to tame her hair, yanking the curly mass into a bun on the top of her head.

Clint was where she had left him, still staring at that evidently enthralling corner. "Ready if you are," Darcy said. "Also, how did you know I wasn't back there being kidnapped?"

"You weren't making 'I'm being kidnapped' noises." He grinned at her horrified face.

"_That's _your incredible protection plan?"

"Hey, I'll have you know that I'm a highly trained agent. But I think we're getting you guys panic buttons today, if that makes you feel better."

Darcy spent most of the rest of the day feeling pretty useless. Jane and Erik were still reconstructing the lab's equipment, and since Darcy didn't actually understand 95% of the machinery she wasn't too much help in putting it back together. Clint didn't understand it either, but apparently his agent status qualified him to use a soldering iron and to provide the necessary muscle to rearrange the furniture. So, Darcy passed the time putting things back in the filing cabinet and appreciating the way Clint's t-shirt stuck to his shoulders after he started sweating a little.

She planned to continue working after dinner. Traditionally, Jane used that time to either host a strategy session or to go out into the desert to take readings. Apparently that part of their routine was changing.

"I'm going to have to check in with SHIELD pretty often," Jane explained apologetically. "Some of their scientists are doing calculations for me, and Director Fury wants to be briefed regularly. That's what the new teleconferencing stuff is for."

"Is that what the screen is?" Clint snorted. Darcy ignored him. "So, skyping with the higher ups. Got it."

"Well... you actually won't be here." Ah. That explained the apologetic tone. "They think you'll be safer if you minimize your functional knowledge of SHIELD. Unless someone has a question for you specifically, you'll go back home while Erik and I stay here to talk to Fury."

Darcy considered this revelation. She should probably be offended at the implication that she didn't know what was going on, or should be kept in the dark- except she really didn't understand most of what Jane talked about, and she'd seen enough mad scientist movies to know that she was already enough of a target. "Okay. I guess I'll go watch a movie or something."

Jane leaned forward to give her a hug. "Thanks, Darce. I really couldn't do this without you."

And when Darcy stood to meander back to the trailer, she wasn't even surprised when Clint stood up too.

* * *

She _was_ a little surprised when he joined her in the living room. She had expected him to be doing something stereotypically secret agent, like cleaning his gun, or push ups. Instead he flopped down next to her on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. He even had a bag of chips.

She didn't realize that she was still staring until he turned to her with a rather bemused look. "What's wrong?"

"Huh? Oh! Nothing. Nothing at all. Just thinking about something." He still looked confused, and she jumped up to put in the movie before he could ask any more questions. Halfway to the DVD player, she pulled up short and turned around. "Um, what did you want to watch?"

"Whatever you were going to put in is fine."

"...are you sure?"

Now he really looked confused. "It's not porn, is it?"

"What? No!"

"Then put it in."

Darcy decided that she had no choice. The rest of her movies were in her room; there was no way she could sneakily switch out the DVD for something a little more man-friendly.

They sat in silence while she skipped through the previews, but he (rather inevitably) started laughing a bit when the main menu popped up. "Beauty and the Beast?"

She peeked over at him, expecting a derisive look, and was shocked to see that he looked genuinely amused. "Yeah. It's one of my favorites. I identify with Belle, y'know?"

"Not really. I haven't seen it."

Her jaw dropped, and she rotated her hips a bit so that she could face him more fully. "How have you not seen this movie?! It's amazing! It was nominated for Best Picture! Don't you have any sense of culture?"

"I don't know if I would call Disney movies culture," he pointed out. "And anyway, I've missed a lot of movies over the years."

Darcy tilted her head to the side. She had spent so much time thinking about how the agents were impacting her life that it hadn't even occurred to her how much SHIELD must impact the lives of the agents. "Well," she said, sounding determined, "We'll just have to fix that."

She had been halfway planning to turn off the movie after five minutes in favor of Transformers or Top Gun, but Clint seemed to enjoy it. At least, he laughed at the appropriate moments, and only made fun of her a little for knowing the words to all the songs.

When the theme started playing over the credits, she nudged his shoulder with hers. "So? What did you think?"

"The Stockholm Syndrome part was kind of creepy for a kid movie," he declared. "But it was okay. I can see why you like Belle."

Of course, Darcy couldn't help herself- "Why?"

He grinned. "You're both kinda weird." He ducked the playful swat she threw at him. "You're also both very smart, and underestimated." He paused for a moment. "And beautiful."

Darcy stared. Was he flirting? God, she hoped he was flirting.

Before she could make up her mind, Jane burst in through the door, declaring that she needed a glass of wine. Erik looked suspiciously at Darcy, who had jumped a few feet and still looked startled. Clint, unsurprisingly, looked perfectly normal.

"Oh, look at the time. I'm going to bed!" Darcy hoped that hadn't been too shrill. She kept herself from running, which she thought was impressive since she could hear Clint's footsteps behind her as he- more slowly- went to his room. She slumped against her closed door and spent several minutes trying to figure out what had happened just before Jane and Erik showed up.

"I hate men," was her only conclusion.

* * *

After the lab was put back together, the routine returned to mostly-normal for a while. Jane developed a new theory about the bridge, cobbled together from SHIELD's advanced readings and some things that Thor told her, and they spent almost three weeks trawling the desert at night, looking for what Jane called 'peak conditions.' Selvig generally stayed back at the lab to monitor transmissions on the machines that were too big to fit in the van, so it was just Jane, Clint, and Darcy driving around most of the time.

Clint seemed pretty content to sit in the back of the van with a book, and Darcy and Jane often forgot that he was there until he would jump in to their conversation with a well-timed joke or an answer to a question. After the first week he stopped pretending to read and openly chatted with them while they poked at the equipment. Somewhere along the way, Darcy stopped thinking about him as just a SHIELD agent. He might not have actually been an intern, but if Jane had been in the market for a second assistant, Clint was exactly the kind of person she would have voted for (assuming, of course, that actual knowledge of science was still not a requirement). While the rest of the guard detail remained aloof and uncomfortable on the occasions that they were actually in the lab, Clint seemed to be making an honest effort to be friends.

Darcy decided that it was only fair that she make an effort to be friends as well.

She quickly discovered that being friends with Clint was really easy. He had a fantastic sense of humor and was willing to let her babble at him about the latest news on IMDb. He remembered her brothers' names and knew her coffee order and favorite Pop Tart flavor. He let her fall asleep on his shoulder and carried her back inside when they didn't go home until sunrise. And if she occasionally pretended to be asleep just to feel his arms under her, or to get to nap under his jacket, hey- she was only human.

One day, when they were singing (...or yelling) along to Quiet Riot, she suddenly realized that she was falling for him. She spent a couple of minutes trying to talk herself out of it, but how often was she going to meet a gorgeous man with a career who appreciated her eclectic personality and got along with her boss?

Darcy thought about talking to him about it, but decided against it. She had annoyed him into showing her a picture of Sophia, his most recent ex. There was no way she could compete with that.

* * *

At the beginning of the fourth week after Thor's disappearance, Jane declared that she had all of the readings that she needed. Darcy wanted to cheer when she realized that she didn't have to go out into the desert that night. While the lab routine might be less exciting, it also involved a full night's sleep.

The rest of the day was pretty standard, if you discounted the fact that Darcy spent most of her time trying to analyze Clint's behavior, especially towards her. She probably should have been working, but Jane and Erik spent the whole afternoon staring at an equation and Darcy had given up trying to follow _that _conversation.

Clint seated himself behind one of the desks and appeared to be reading one of Jane's research binders. Darcy wondered if he had a comic book hidden inside.

Around 3:00 they had one of those serendipitous moments where they both looked up, connected gazes, and smiled. Darcy blushed and looked away. When she looked back, he was still smiling at her. His eyes drifted briefly to Jane, who was flailing her arms around like a crazy person, before he winked at Darcy and looked back down at his binder/comic book.

Darcy was caught between wanting to groan and wanting to make a 'squee!' noise. Clint was gorgeous, and cut. He was smart. He appreciated Disney. Okay, that last one was kind of a lie, but he accepted _her _love of Disney, which was more than she got out of most guys.

He was also a secret agent who was forced to hang out with her because of his job.

Darcy decided that this internship was becoming way too much of a headfuck.

Over at his desk, Clint was doing his own thinking.

He liked Darcy. _Really _liked her. Which, if he was being honest, was kind of the problem. If it was just a fleeting attraction to her boobs, he could get the staring out of his system and go on his way. But having spent the last month with her almost 24/7, he found himself thinking much less about her (admittedly fantastic) boobs than her sense of humor, or semi-ridiculous knowledge of movie trivia. He wanted to kiss her, but he also wanted to talk to her.

The slight plus side to the situation was that she understood exactly why they were spending so much time together. On some of his past guard details, he had been so deep under that the detailee didn't realize that he wasn't actually their new employee, or best friend, or lover. When this mission was over he wouldn't necessarily have to say goodbye to Darcy forever. Her knowledge of the bridge, and of SHIELD, meant that she would be under some kind of surveillance for the rest of her life.

Unfortunately the positives didn't out-weigh the negatives. Yes, Darcy knew exactly who he was. But he was still an agent assigned to protect her. Coulson would be _livid_. And really, Clint was getting ahead of himself anyway. Darcy was young and bubbly and beautiful. Clint didn't suffer from a lack of self-esteem, but he was very aware that he was much older and covered in scars (literally) and carrying quite a bit of baggage. The fact that she wasn't annoyed about him following her around didn't mean anything.

* * *

They hadn't actually made plans, but when Jane kicked them out of the lab that evening so that she could tell Fury about the new equation she was working on, they both wound up on the couch.

"So," Darcy hesitated, "I figured since I picked the first movie, you should pick tonight. I grabbed a pretty wide spread of choices."

Clint wriggled himself closer to her so that he could look at the DVDs in her lap. "I haven't seen any of these," he admitted. "Suddenly I'm feeling like I've missed a lot."

Darcy looked horrified. "You've got to be joking."

"Nope, sorry." He grinned at her expression. "Guess we're just going to have to watch them all."

"Yes. Yes we are." Darcy gave the movies a considering look before plucking one from halfway through the stack. "We'll start with Inception. It's very secret agent appropriate."

As she predicted, Clint was immediately engrossed in the complicated plot. He was a little picky about some of the fight sequences- evidently some of the actors needed more training with their weapons- but was very impressed when Darcy told him that the rolling hallway sequence had been filmed on an actual rotating set.

When Darcy turned around after putting the movie back in its case, Clint looked pretty zoned out. "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm trying to remember a dream."

"Oh. Yeah, this movie'll do that." They sat in silence for a few minutes before she prompted, "Do you not remember your dreams?"

"I haven't in years. It's unusual for us to get enough sleep on missions, and I guess maybe my brain has started protecting me from having to think about my job at night."

"I guess that makes sense. My dreams tend to be pretty ridiculous and disjointed. I don't think you're missing much."

"Maybe not." They sat in silence for a few more minutes. Darcy could appreciate a guy who could just sit and be quiet. When she realized that she wasn't sitting quietly so much as eye-fucking his jawline, she excused herself to bed before she started actually drooling.

Of course, since they had just watched a movie about weird dreams, Darcy followed it up by having a nightmare.

_She was full-out sprinting through a narrow street from something- she wasn't quite sure what, but her subconscious seemed pretty sure that it wanted to kill her- with her heart pounding in her ears and suddenly she was at a dead end. When she turned she saw the something and started screaming, and that's when she could suddenly hear Clint's voice calling to her._

She woke up all at once, sitting straight up and almost banging her forehead into Clint's, who had been leaning over her.

"Darcy?" he asked cautiously. "Are you okay?"

"Holy shit," she gasped out, her breathing starting to level a bit. "That was awful."

"I'm sorry." She suddenly realized that Clint was sitting on the edge of her bed, and that one of his hands was brushing her sweaty hair back from her forehead. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I really don't remember it. I just remember being terrified because something was chasing me. And then I heard you saying my name and I woke up." She knew she shouldn't lean into his hand, but hey- she was only human.

"Hey, look at me." The unexpected softness of his voice shocked Darcy into actually making eye contact. "I am not going to let anything happen to you. I promise."

Darcy took a deep breath. Damn, his eyes were gorgeous. "Okay. Thanks for waking me up."

"Sure." His brow furrowed. "Do you want me to stay?"

"N-no, I'm okay. I think. I'm just going to read until I doze back off."

"Okay." He leaned forward and, so softly that she wasn't sure it actually happened, brushed his lips across her forehead. "Come get me if you need anything."

* * *

As always, reviews are appreciated.


	3. Chapter 3

Many thanks to all those who have reviewed/favorited/followed! It really means a lot. :-)

Movies referenced: Mean Girls and Dead Poets Society. Mean Girls is basically about high school cliques. The character referenced, Regina, is the leader of the bitchy clique. Dead Poets Society is kind of a teen angst movie, where a new teacher shows up at a stodgy boys' boarding school and challenges them to really think about life. Said teacher references Thoreau a lot, which is mentioned in the chapter.

* * *

She expected him to say something about her nightmare the next morning, but he just smiled and poured her a cup of coffee. She doodled her way through a meeting about subatomic particles and decided that he probably saw nightmares a lot in his line of work. It didn't make her any less grateful, but it did explain how he had known exactly what to do.

After lunch Jane surfaced from her notes long enough to tell Darcy that she thought she heard crying the night before. Jane might be scatterbrained about some things, but she was not stupid and she noticed the way Darcy's eyes flickered over to Clint before she answered.

"Eh, just a nightmare. No big. Probs just residual from the flame-spewing monster."

"Uh huh," Jane studied her assistant with a practiced eye. "You know, Darcy, if you ever want to talk to me about anything- like, say, the fact that you're being forced into spending most of your time with a secret agent who is totally your type- I'm here for you."

"Thanks, boss, but I've got it under control. Just a little crush on the teacher sort of situation."

If she'd let her eyes wander to Clint again, she would have noticed how he was watching her and Jane, seemingly entranced by the rosy blush staining her cheeks. But she didn't, and he was left wondering what they were talking about that had apparently made Darcy so embarrassed.

The fact that he even had to wonder was simultaneously bothering him and making him more interested. Clint wasn't the type to sleep around, but he'd been around the block a few times, and all of his training in spying from a distance had made him pretty good at reading people. He could usually interpret body language, no problem, especially with someone that he'd gotten to know. He knew that Jane was worried- probably about Darcy- but he had no freaking clue why Darcy was embarrassed. It was starting to piss him off.

Darcy disappeared to the roof for the rest of the afternoon. He had started to follow her up, but Jane stopped him and said that she probably needed to be alone for a couple of minutes. He knew that as long as she was on the roof of the lab she was within easy view of at least three agents, so he didn't have to worry about her safety. Instead he sat at 'his' desk and eventually went back to the trailer alone when it was time for Jane to call SHIELD headquarters.

Darcy was chased back to the trailer shortly after Clint, and found him in the living room reading the backs of DVD cases. She took a moment to study the back of his head before she asked "Anything look interesting?"

"Kind of. But you should pick."

Darcy shuffled around to the couch and sank down next to him. She was in the mood for something girly and cliché, preferably a rom-com, but somehow watching one of those movies with Clint when he was the one making her feel that way seemed counterproductive. Her time on the roof hadn't done enough to sort out her thoughts, and she was hyperaware of his solid body on the couch.

It was completely unfair that he made scarfing down a bag of cheetos look that sexy. How the hell did he stay so cut? If she ate like that she'd be at least three sizes bigger.

She shook her head to snap herself out of it. She sounded like one of the Rich Bitches from high school. The thought made her smile. "I know what we're watching."

"Oh? Which one?"

"Mean Girls."

Maybe Clint could tell that she didn't want to talk, because they watched the movie in silence, aside from occasional bouts of laughter. He had wedged himself into one corner of the couch, and Darcy curled into the other corner and wondered how the space between them simultaneously felt like twenty feet and two inches.

At the end of the movie he looked oddly contemplative, considering that Mean Girls was not a super cerebral film, and Darcy stretched out a leg to poke his thigh with her foot. "So, what did you think?"

"It was funny. I liked it." He clearly had more to say, and Darcy decided to wait for him to spit it out instead of prodding. "Is high school really like that?"

That had been about the last thing that Darcy expected him to say. "Uh, mine was, kinda. I think most high schools have bits of that. Didn't yours?"

Clint laughed, sounding just a little bitter. "I didn't actually go to high school."

"No shit?"

"No shit. I spent that part of my life with a circus. Some of the adults with more parental inclinations tried to keep us up with our education, but with all the travel that just meant that they handed us books a lot. Other than SHIELD stuff I haven't been in a classroom since I was… oh, about twelve, I guess."

"Huh. I never would have guessed."

"You're not supposed to be able to. SHIELD agents might be short on culture, but we know how to blend in." Clint's expression hadn't changed, but his voice was rough with regret.

"I'm sorry I made you upset," Darcy said in a small voice. "I think you're awesome, seriously. I just like to make fun of people and-"

"Darcy," Clint grabbed her foot to get her attention. "You didn't make me upset. You've done nothing but try to treat me like a friend instead of just a bodyguard, and I appreciate it."

It was the best possible thing that he could have said. "I like being friends, Clint."

He smiled that lopsided smile that she was starting to love. "Me, too." He squeezed her toes a bit, and said "So tell me about your high school. Were you a Regina?"

Darcy burst out laughing. "As if! I was kind of this really geeky kid that no one paid attention to, unless they wanted to copy my History homework. At least, until about halfway through my sophomore year, when guys got super into my boobs. But in high school having a nice rack is more trouble than it's worth."

"Why?" Clint, bless him, looked honestly confused.

"I don't know if you've forgotten what being a 16-year-old guy is like, but they're not really into commitment. Or being nice. They just wanted my bra off and that was it." Darcy shrugged. "After about the fifth time I let my heart get broken I swore off dating until college, at which point guys mostly just wanted sex." She stretched her other foot out to kick him again, since the first foot was still held captive in his grip. "Why are men such jerks?"

"Those weren't men, Darcy, they were boys."

Darcy's head snapped up at the venom in his voice. He honest-to-goodness looked ready to go crusading off into the sunset to break the nose of every douchebag that had hurt her, and she felt tears begin to prick at the back of her eyes. Ugh, since when did she get all weepy over morons from her past? "If you say so."

"I do." Clint's hands began to move, pressing his thumbs into the balls of her feet. "Darcy, if you get anything out of this internship, please have it be knowing that the right guy will be into more than just your boobs."

Darcy pretended to give it some consideration. "Well, I was hoping to learn something about science, but I guess dating advice is a close second."

Clint snorted, his hands still moving over her feet. Darcy was trying not to draw attention to that, because she didn't want him to stop, but when he worked out the pain in her ankle that had been there since she wore those ridiculous heeled boots the week before she couldn't help the low moan that slipped out.

"Good?" Clint asked. She hadn't raised her head but she could hear the smile in his voice.

"Amazing," Darcy said fervently. "If you ever want to retire from SHIELD you could make a living doing chair massages at the mall. How are you not married yet with skills like these?"

For a second Darcy thought that maybe that was too personal, but then Clint said "I haven't found anyone that I like that doesn't get too freaked out by the secret agent thing."

"I guess that makes sense." Darcy thought some more. "Well, maybe it doesn't. SHIELD is such a huge part of your life. I can't imagine you doing anything else."

"If you decide that you want to marry a secret agent, let me know."

She should have said something then, but really, Darcy had always been kind of chickenshit about some things. So instead of telling him that she would love to marry him- or, at least, start dating him- she leaned back against the cushions and focused on his amazing hands.

He kept it up until Jane and Erik came home, which had become their signal that it was time to disappear. She pouted as she pulled her feet out of his lap.

"You have ruined all other men for me, you realize."

He winked. "That was the plan."

She was almost to her room when he called down the hall after her.

"If you want, I'll do your back tomorrow."

* * *

Darcy decided halfway through the next morning that she should have just stayed in bed. Between the crazy weather (a heat advisory AND a flash flood? the fuck?) and Jane losing a pen in her hair, it was just not a good day to be in the lab. Plus, she admitted to herself, she was really looking forward to movie time. She still wasn't sure if his sidelong glances indicated any kind of romantic interest, but she was going to find out.

She, Darcy Lewis, was going to confront Clint Barton about the exact nature of their movie dates.

But probably not until after the backrub.

_Definitely _not until after the backrub, she amended once they (finally!) made it back to the trailer. He immediately sent her back to her room to change into a tank top so that he could use lotion. She took advantage of the changing time to also put on a gorgeous bra and a pair of jeans that made her ass look fantastic.

When she made it back to the living room, she was gratified to notice Clint's eyes giving her a quick once over before he indicated the space on the floor in front of him. He had shoved the coffee table out of the way and put a movie in the DVD player.

She raised an eyebrow at the screen. "Dead Poets Society?"

"It looks good," he said. "Plus, after Mean Girls, I think we're due for something a little more serious. Now come sit."

Darcy cautiously settled herself on a cushion on the floor, very conscious of her position between his knees. He must have been able to feel the way she stiffened because he poked the back of her shoulder and said "Relax, Darce. Enjoy the movie."

So she tried to watch Robin Williams use his unconventional teaching methods to reach the teenage boys, but most of her attention remained focused on Clint. After a few general passes to smooth some lotion into her skin, he had started really working on her back. Knots were dissolving that Darcy hadn't even realized existed. Before long her head was tilted forward, eyes on her lap, so that he could have better access to her neck.

Eh, she'd seen the movie before.

The total focus of her attention on his hands resulted in more of a primal response. Her breathing was growing shorter, and she hoped that he couldn't feel the way her heart had started to pound. She felt like her entire existence was consumed with following the paths his hands were taking across her back, so when he paused and hooked his fingers under the straps of her tank top and bra to ask, "Okay?" it took a moment for her brain to catch up.

"Yeah, okay."

She was still mostly clothed- her top hadn't fallen down at all, and the straps were looped over her upper arms- but his hands had started moving unimpeded across her upper back, occasionally drifting up into her hair, or lower as he ran his thumbs down either side of her spine. Darcy felt simultaneously relaxed and very, very turned on.

She decided that every woman should date a secret agent, then pushed that thought away. She wasn't dating a secret agent, as much as she wanted to be. She needed to make a move for that to happen.

By the time the credits started rolling, he was no longer massaging so much as gently running his fingers through her hair. Darcy didn't blame him. After all, even secret agents needed breaks. Besides, this felt more intimate. Like something a boyfriend would do.

"Do you think he was right?" Clint asked quietly. "That most men lead lives of quiet desperation?"

Darcy turned sideways, so that she was leaning against his thigh, head resting on his knee. "I don't know. I think a lot of people don't know what they want, or if they do, they don't go for it." She smiled up at him, gaze just a little dreamy. "Carpe diem, right?"

Clint's eyes darkened slightly. "Yeah." Reaching down, he scooped Darcy up and settled her next to him on the couch, still sideways, so that her legs were in his lap. Darcy may or may not have squeaked a bit at the sudden movement, and was surprised to find herself sitting so close to him with one arm looped around his neck for balance.

"So," he prompted, hands still gripping her waist. "What is it that you want?"

Darcy stared at him. "If you haven't figured it out by now you're dumber than I thought."

She had planned on saying something else, perhaps to the effect of how handsome he was or how safe he made her feel, but he cut her off with a kiss.

SHIELD Agent Clint Barton, she decided, was a _really _good kisser.

Darcy was used to first kisses being awkward. There was always some bumping of noses and trying to figure out who leaned where, and she never knew what to do with her hands. Clint had apparently kissed the brains right out of her, because she wasn't thinking about anything but how amazing his lips felt against her own. Somehow she wound up with one hand in his hair and the other holding a deathgrip on his shoulder, and she had the distinct feeling that she would have overbalanced and fallen off the couch if not for his hands still firmly on her waist.

She whined a little when he pulled away. "Why did you stop?" she whispered.

"Well," he said, pulling the straps of her bra and tank top back up on her shoulders, "Jane and Erik should be back soon, and somehow I don't think you want them to see us making out on the couch."

He was right, but of course Darcy's mouth moved faster than her brain. "That wasn't making out, there wasn't even tongue!"

Clint was suddenly sporting an evil grin, but whatever he was going to say (or do) was interrupted by Jane's voice from outside. In just seconds he had moved to the other end of the couch and hit play on the paused DVD so that it looked like the credits had just started rolling. Darcy was sure that Jane would know- she felt like there was a sign on her forehead declaring that she had kissed Clint- but Jane just asked Clint how he liked the movie before announcing that she had lots of new ideas to test out the next day.

They all made idle chit chat for a few minutes before Darcy escaped back to her room. She needed to think, and she was definitely looking forward to whatever dreams she might have that night. Just before she closed her door, she heard Clint softly call her name.

"Good night," he whispered, before ducking his head and proceeding to absolutely kiss the sass out of her.

With tongue.

Darcy was really getting into it when he pulled away. She made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat and glared up at him. "You realize you're totally cockblocking yourself, right?" she hissed.

He smirked. "Appreciate the tip, but the walls in this place are thin and there's about ten people within easy listening distance." He kissed her again, lightly. "Soon. I promise."

He had a point, damn him. "Fine. But I fully expect you to make this up to me."

* * *

As always, reviews are appreciated!


	4. Chapter 4

Movie referenced: Toy Story 3. Darcy basically gives the necessary backstory. This chapter does have more spoilery content than usual, with specific references/quotes from two scenes at the end of the movie.

* * *

Clint was not a morning person.

Darcy probably should have been concerned that her bodyguard couldn't function without caffeine, but the part of her that now predominantly saw Clint as her boyfriend (was he her boyfriend? good friend? future fuck buddy?) was too busy being gooey inside over his sleep mussed hair and the way it took him so long to process things until he had at least two cups of coffee.

Jane and Erik were both obnoxiously eager in the mornings and were already on their way out the door when Darcy made it to the kitchen. She hesitated a bit in the doorway, not sure how she was supposed to greet Clint, who was sitting on the counter inhaling coffee.

"Shower's free," she finally offered, going to the cupboard in search of Pop Tarts.

"Mmkay," he mumbled, sliding down to the floor. "Morning, baby." As he crossed by her he leaned down to drop a kiss on her temple, though he wound up closer to her ear (apparently his coordination was off), but Darcy decided it was the thought that counted.

The shower seemed to wake him up a bit, because Darcy could hear him whistling as he came out of the bathroom. He was still pulling on his shirt when he walked into the kitchen, and Darcy was suddenly very glad that she was sitting down, because holy hell his chest combined with his arms more or less had her brain leaking out of her ears.

"So," he said, flopping down in the chair next to hers, "It's Friday."

"Uh huh," Darcy said, focus back on her breakfast now that Clint was fully clothed.

"I think you should have a breakdown."

"What?" Darcy choked a bit on a piece of Pop Tart. She was pretty sure she heard him correctly, but his expression hadn't changed. He looked like he was talking about the weather.

"Yeah. You should tell Jane that you're stressed out about the whole thing with Thor and the Destroyer, and being surrounded by agents." He tilted his head to one side, looking pensive. "Maybe cry a little."

"And I would do this because...?"

"Because then Jane will give you the weekend off," he explained, sounding rather like he was talking to a small child. "And then you can say that you want to go away for the weekend, to get away from SHIELD, and I can offer to go with you since you won't be able to go by yourself."

Darcy looked at him suspiciously. "Is this just your grand scheme to get laid?"

Clint's grin was absolutely wicked. "More or less." His expression softened and one hand came up to play with her hair. "I'm not trying to pressure you," he said finally. "But we really don't have any privacy here, and you deserve a break. There's some nice resorts within easy driving distance."

Darcy leaned over to kiss his cheek. "I think it's a great idea."

She had been planning to keep talking, but Clint turned his head to kiss her properly and that seemed way more fun. She wasn't quite sure how, but when his watch beeped to indicate that it was 9:00, she had somehow moved out of her chair to straddle his lap. His hands were palming her ass and hers were underneath his shirt. Darcy pulled back with a blush.

"I should get to work."

Clint grinned. "You might want to fix your hair first."

* * *

Jane, Erik, and Coulson were all very perceptive people, and Darcy was a terrible liar, so she was honestly shocked when Operation Breakdown went off so convincingly.

Of course, she realized halfway through her rambling explanation that she actually _was _feeling kind of traumatized about everything that had happened. She really did need some time to clear her head. She wondered if Clint had been able to tell.

He hadn't moved during her performance, as much as he wanted to go wrap his arms around her once he realized the tears were real. He left the hugging to Jane, who conveniently brought up the idea of taking a weekend away. This was going to go a lot smoother if everyone thought it was Jane's idea.

Coulson had a considering look on his face. "I don't see why Miss Lewis couldn't go away for a few days," he said finally. "SHIELD will select a secure location and take care of the reservation. We do need to send an agent with you."

"Yeah, I know." Darcy sounded appropriately petulant, which she thought was impressive, since them sending an agent away with her was kind of the point.

"Agent Barton will go with you," Coulson decided. "We can sell it as the interns having the weekend off. You'll have to share a room, though, to make it look like you can actually afford the place."

Darcy decided that she really did like Coulson after all.

"Why don't you take the rest of the day off?" Jane offered. "Go pack. There's not much going on here anyway."

Congratulating herself, Darcy headed for the door. Clint got up to follow her- to do his duty as her bodyguard, of course.

"Barton!" Coulson barked.

Clint winced a little, turning. "Yes, sir?"

"I expect you to be a gentleman and let her have the bed."

Clint bit back a laugh. "Yes, sir."

Darcy was waiting for him just outside the door to the lab. "So, Mr. Gentleman," she murmered. "Looks like we have a whole weekend to ourselves. Whatever will we do?"

Clint took her elbow, steering her towards the relative privacy of the residence. "I'm sure we'll think of something."

Darcy took longer than usual to pack. She was normally one of those travelers who just threw a few things into a suitcase and made it work, but she had also never travelled with anyone other than her family, or Jane. Somehow her Care Bear pajamas did not seem appropriate for this trip. By the time she narrowed down her options (she refused to be one of those people who packed twenty outfits for one weekend away), Clint had packed, picked up a travel weapons case from the cache hidden in the lab, and pulled a pick-up truck in front of the door.

She expected some teasing about how long she had taken, but he just smiled and said "Ready?"

Darcy grinned back, jumping up into the truck. "Ready."

* * *

They had been driving for half an hour before Darcy realized that she had no idea where they were going. When she asked, Clint consulted a post-it note on the dashboard. "Some place called Serenity," he said with a shrug. "I'm sure they chose it because the security is good. Which probably means that it's a five star place."

"Score!" Darcy cheered. "I've never stayed anywhere that swanky. Can we order room service?"

Clint laughed, his right hand reaching for her left. "Whatever you want."

* * *

Serenity, Darcy decided, was not actually a five star resort. It was more deserving of seven or eight stars.

Clint was in the middle of checking them in to their (outrageously priced, there was no way they could have afforded it if they were really interns) suite. Darcy probably should have worried about their cover being blown, but decided that was SHIELD's problem. Instead, she was slowly turning in a circle, taking in the incredibly decadent lobby.

"I think I should have more breakdowns," she announced.

Clint laughed, lacing their fingers together and leading her to the elevators. "Jane might figure it out if you pulled this too often."

The suite was absolutely fantastic. There was a kitchen (which Darcy had no intention of using, but it was nice to know she could cook, if she wanted to) and a huge living room with a tv that looked like it belonged in a movie theater. The bedroom featured a king size bed with the comfiest looking pillows Darcy had ever seen.

"Dude, we have a jacuzzi!" she squealed as she walked into the bathroom. "This is _awesome_!"

Clint wrapped his arms around her from behind, leaning down to kiss the side of her neck. "Want to try it out?"

Darcy tilted her head to give him better access, suddenly very aware of the fact that she was on her first vacation in years.

"Later," she decided. "Pool first?"

"Sure." His fingers tightened briefly before he let her go. "I need to do some security stuff on the doors and check in with Coulson. Go ahead and get changed."

Thankfully, Darcy had remembered to pack her bathing suit, a bright red two piece that horrified her mother. Darcy liked it anyway, reasoning that the suit itself wasn't really that racy- she had a tendency to look like a pin-up girl in any bathing suit she tried on, thanks to her generous curves. She pulled a sundress on over it, and dug all the way down to the bottom of her bag before she found both flip flops.

Clint, who was apparently the most efficient person on the planet, had changed while she was still in the bathroom putting up her hair, moving on to making sure the room was secure. His phone was tucked against his shoulder as he assured someone- Coulson?- that he had all the equipment he needed. Darcy didn't actually know what he was doing to the windows, but he was wearing a pair of board shorts and nothing else, so she decided to sit back and enjoy the view.

Clint wrapped up the phone call and turned to Darcy. "Do you know how to use a gun?"

"Are you shitting me?" Darcy said with a laugh. "But I brought my taser."

"Okay. There's some weapons hidden throughout the room, so be careful if you start going through the drawers. If something happens, barricade yourself in the bathroom and I'll take care of it."

"Are we expecting something to happen?"

"Probably not, but Coulson likes us to have contingency plans." He stretched, and Darcy was momentarily distracted by the way his stomach tightened. "Ready?"

"Huh? Yes."

The pool was predictably glamorous. There were lounge chairs with poofy cushions, attendants handing out towels, and a freaking swim-up bar in the shallow end. Clint steered her towards some chairs up against the building, away from the external fence. Darcy wondered if his brain was programmed to automatically assess possible threats.

Clint started to ask her if she wanted something to drink while she was busy pulling off her sundress. When his voice cut out mid-sentence she whirled around, expecting to see him fighting off some sort of enemy. Thankfully, there was no fight- just a dumbstruck Clint who had evidently been staring at her ass. His eyes trailed up her body, taking in all her curves, before resting on her face.

Darcy grinned. "Hi. Welcome back."

"Do you have any idea how sexy you are?" Clint asked.

Darcy could feel her face turning tomato red. "Thanks. You're not so bad yourself."

Clint looked like he wanted to say something else, but thought better of it when several small children ran past.

Since they hadn't reached Serenity until late afternoon they only swam for an hour before Darcy decided it was time for room service.

"I think I'm going to order everything," she announced, flipping through the menu.

"We're here for two more days," Clint pointed out. "Why not order some of it tomorrow?"

Darcy sighed. "You and your logic."

As it turned out, even five star resorts took some time to send up room service. They used the time to shower (not together, though Darcy had thought about suggesting it) and Darcy was nearly done blow drying her hair when they heard the knock at the door.

She rolled her eyes as Clint took the time to make sure there was a gun handy before he opened the door, but decided that she should be grateful. She was going to feel really stupid if she got kidnapped by some sort of enemy before she got the chance to sex up her boyfriend.

* * *

"This was totally worth the wait," Darcy announced as she helped herself to more chicken. "Do you think they would notice if we kidnapped the chef?"

"Nah, we could get away with it."

Darcy grinned at him across the table. While they could have spread out all over the floor or out on the balcony, they had naturally gravitated to the gorgeous cherry table in the breakfast nook. It felt kind of like an actual date.

The conversation was pretty date-like, too. They knew each other fairly well- after all, they had basically spent the last month constantly in each other's company- but Clint brought out some circus stories that Darcy hadn't heard before that had her choking on her water with laughter.

Darcy felt kind of stupid, but throughout the whole evening (the whole day, really) she hadn't been able to shake the knowledge that she was going to sleep with Clint. She absolutely wanted to, had been wanting to for a while, but somehow all of this lead-up was making her feel awkward. The longer they waited, the more she felt like their expectations were getting unattainably high, like it was supposed to be some kind of hallelujah chorus moment instead of just a tumble in the sheets.

Dessert was some kind of decadent chocolate cake that involved strawberries and whipped cream. By the time Darcy dragged one last strawberry through the whipped cream and popped it into her mouth, the sun was completely down, and the lighting in the suite was dim.

"So, have your expectations been met?" Clint asked.

"For now."

Clint's eyebrows went up. "And what needs to happen to meet your future expectations?"

Darcy gave him her best attempt at a hooded glance. "Get over here."

Clint, thank goodness, knew exactly what she meant. Before she had time to blink he was next to her, lifting and turning her so that she was sitting on the table with her legs around his hips.

Darcy laughed in between kisses. "You've been waiting for this, haven't you?"

"You couldn't tell? I'm still proud that I didn't jump you down at the pool."

Darcy poked at his shoulder, pulling back a little. "Why didn't you?"

"I told you this morning- I don't want you to feel pressured." He gave her a slow, lingering kiss. "Besides, the anticipation is half the fun."

Darcy gave him a considering look. "You're one of those guys that's personally offended by lack of foreplay, aren't you?"

Clint's response was to give her a wicked grin and hoist her up into his arms, heading for the bedroom. "I'm not opposed to quickies in closets. But tonight... you're going to remember this."

* * *

Several hours later, Darcy was finally dozing off, nuzzled into Clint's (hickey-covered) neck. Her skin had mostly stopped humming, her body gradually winding down from their earlier... activities. "You were right," she mumbled. "I am going to remember this."

Darcy was really not the type to psychoanalyze herself or her relationships, especially when she was having mindblowing sex, but something about tonight had just been different. Something about the way that Clint looked at her, made no secret that he wanted her, absolutely fucking worshipped her body, gave the whole thing a greater sense of permanence than she'd had before.

She figured she should probably be worried that she was getting so blatantly attached, but then his head dropped down to kiss her again and she had more important things to worry about.

* * *

She did some quick thinking when they got back to the lab and Jane asked what she had done on her vacation, because the truth was that they spent most of it in bed, with occasional trips to the jacuzzi, or to the door when room service showed up. She usually made Clint deal with the door because she couldn't be bothered to get dressed. Most of the clothes she packed never left the suitcase.

Somehow, telling her boss that she had spent the weekend discovering just how acrobatic the circus-performer-turned-secret-agent really was seemed like a bad idea. (The answer was that he was _very _acrobatic, and strong, and had _stamina_. Holy hell.)

She was also surprised to discover that he was a cuddler. He had warned her during the drive up that he had some lingering PTSD issues that occasionally caused nightmares, and that he didn't always sleep through the night, but as far as she could tell he slept fabulously. With the way he pressed up against her she knew she would have noticed if he was awake or having a nightmare. He also tended to reach for her when they were awake. She had grown accustomed to his chest under her cheek and his hand in hers, and knew that going back to just being 'friends' was going to suck.

Clint evidently breezed through his de-brief with Coulson and stuck his head into the lab, wanting to know if Jane was going to talk to Fury that evening. Jane, who had apparently completely lost track of the time, jumped and shooed Darcy out of the lab so she could organize her notes.

"So, movie?" She suggested in what she hoped was an innocent voice.

"Sounds good." He sounded completely unaffected and normal. Freaking secret agent training.

* * *

Three weeks after their vacation, the rest of Darcy's DVDs arrived in a shipping box from her parents, and she triumphantly dug through the pile and brandished a case at Clint.

"Toy Story 3?" He asked.

"Yes, it's amazing. Be quiet and watch it with me or I'll never have sex with you again."

"Empty threat," he pointed out with a grin. "That would have been way more convincing if you'd started small and worked your way up."

"Ugh, whatever, just help me find the remote."

"Yes, ma'am." He obediently began flipping the couch cushions as Darcy rummaged through the kitchen drawers. "Is this a bad time to tell you that I haven't seen the first two?"

"Won't matter much." Her voice was muffled by the cabinet doors, and he had to straighten up to hear her. "The toys are alive, they belong to a kid named Andy, and they love him. That's really all the backstory you need." Her voice took on a triumphant tone. "Got it!"

"Do I want to know why the remote was in the fridge?"

"Jane tried to clean," Darcy said with a shrug.

"Your boss is weird."

"You really want to get into a shit throwing contest about bosses?" Darcy pointed out. "At least mine isn't part of some government conspiracy to take over the world."

"I already told you, SHIELD doesn't want to take over the world. We just make sure it's safe."

Darcy snorted. "Okay, Captain Planet. Now be quiet. The movie's starting."

Darcy may or may not have been testing him a little with the movie. She knew that she was probably going to cry, and she wanted to see how he handled it. (She also wanted to take full advantage of some cuddling time while Jane and Erik were in the lab, but that applied to all movie nights.)

Sure enough, she started tearing up during the incinerator sequence, and when Andy started giving the toys away the first tears started rolling down her cheeks. When Andy said, _"Now Woody, he's been my pal for as long as I can remember. He's brave, like a cowboy should be. And kind, and smart. But the thing that makes Woody special is he'll never give up on you... ever. He'll be there for you no matter what," _she couldn't stop a loud sniff.

Clint looked down at her, brow furrowing when he saw her tears. "Hey, c'mere," he said softly, pulling Darcy fully into his lap. She leaned into his chest, listening to his heart beat through his t-shirt while one of his hands stroked over her hair. "Is it just the movie?"

Darcy gave a half-hearted shrug. "Kinda. Mostly because I saw it for the first time with some of my best friends from college, and now that we've all said goodbye it just... it hits close to home."

Clint's arms tightened around her before he kissed her, a brief, close-mouthed touch that should have been pretty chaste but wound up feeling like a promise.

* * *

AN: Yay, sap! Also, next chapter syncs up with the Avengers timeline.


	5. Chapter 5

AN: This chapter contains **spoilers for Avengers**. I feel like you've all probably seen it, but still. You have been warned.

Also, I couldn't find any canon proof about the length of time between Thor and Avengers, so I went with six months to build in time to set up Selvig's project with the tesseract/phase two.

* * *

Sometimes Darcy's life really sucked.

Her life in New Mexico, now six months post-Thor, had finally fallen into a routine. She sort of understood what was going on with Jane's research (at least, enough to be a useful minion) and Jane was even making progress in re-establishing the connection to Asgard. SHIELD agents randomly appearing in the lab (or the grocery store, or the apartment...) no longer surprised her. Things with Clint seemed to be going perfectly. She realized early on that something about them just- clicked. Being with him seemed as natural as breathing.

But now she was going away.

Jane's research had progressed so much that she had figured out that the bridge was being built from the other side. However, the new bridge did not connect to New Mexico. As far as Jane could tell, it was going to touch down in Montana.

At first, the whole New Mexico vs. Montana thing hadn't seemed like an issue. She wasn't really all that attached to New Mexico, and going from one rural town to another seemed unlikely to improve her shopping prospects. But then Jane kept talking. Erik Selvig would not be joining them in Montana. He was staying to continue working on his top-secret project at the new complex they had built a few miles from Jane's lab. The division of their team also meant a division of their SHIELD contingent. Coulson was staying in New Mexico.

And so was Clint.

As much fun as a secret relationship could be, at that moment Darcy really wished that everyone knew. Sitting across the table from her boyfriend, being told that they were about to be separated, and not being able to touch him sucked. Even making eye contact was hard, because then she could see just how annoyed _he _was about leaving _her_, and then she wanted to cry.

While Coulson was busy explaining their travel arrangements, Darcy slightly raised her eyebrows at him. _Did you know about this?_

Clint's head shifted slightly to the left, then back to center. _No._

Well, at least Darcy hadn't been the only one out of the loop.

The enormously shitty thing about the situation was that they were leaving almost immediately. Jane's calculations indicated that the bridge could appear any day now, and whatever Erik was going to be working on was secret enough (aka: dangerous enough) that SHIELD wanted all unnecessary personnel moved away. A nondescript moving truck was backing into the compound; they would hit the road as quickly as everything could be put inside.

Jane stayed in the lab to make sure that her precious equipment was loaded safely, and with some sense of organization so that they could set up quickly when they reached Montana. Darcy went back to their residence to pack their personal belongings. Fortunately most of the big stuff had been provided by SHIELD, but she and Jane had an awful lot of clothes and knick-knacks between them. She packed as slowly as she could without attracting attention. Clint was busy briefing someone named Adam, who was apparently their new head bodyguard/intern, and she wanted to make sure that she saw him before they left.

When she was taping shut the last of the boxes she finally heard his voice out in the living room. She couldn't hear exactly what he said, but the other agents began to leave. She listened to his footsteps come down the hallway, detouring quickly into his bedroom, before he knocked on her door.

There were so many things that she wanted to tell him, but tears were flowing thickly down her face and she seemed to have lost her ability to speak. Instead she collapsed into him, burying her face into his chest as his arms closed around her like a vice.

"We only have a minute," he mumbled into her hair. "Everything is in the truck, and they know we're in here saying goodbye."

In other words, Coulson thought they were saying a quick, professional farewell, and then Darcy would be out the door.

Clint pulled away from her just enough to tilt her face up to his, and then they were kissing, and Darcy thought that she could happily live the rest of her life on the run from SHIELD if it meant that she could stay with him. When had she become one of 'those girls' who would give everything up for a guy?

"Darcy." Clint's fingers ran over her face, trying to wipe away her tears. "Baby, I need you to be strong. If you and Jane can open the bridge you'll probably get an offer to work at headquarters in New York, and if they go ahead with the Initiative, I'll be there too." Darcy had only a vague idea of what he was talking about- he was too well-trained to give her much classified information- but knowing that she might see him again once Jane got the bridge open was enough to mostly make her stop crying.

"I have something for you," she said shyly. When she was throwing things into boxes she had realized that she wanted to leave him something as a reminder. She'd have liked to have time to go shopping, or at least print some pictures, but given the time constraints she'd made do with some things already in her room. Her fleece tie blanket, some of the DVDs they had watched together, a framed picture of her as a child with her dog, Sadie, and a quickly scribbled note were shoved into a plain backpack that he could pass off as his own.

He smiled. "I have something for you too." He handed her a small duffel bag. "Open it later, okay?"

"Am I going to be able to talk to you?" Darcy asked him a small voice. "Or is this goodbye until New York?"

"We'll be able to talk a little," Clint promised. "Nothing work related, and I might have to go quiet sometimes, but I'll still have my cell phone. Just texts when I'm on duty, though."

Truthfully, text messages were more than she had been expecting, and the sudden realization that she wouldn't be totally cut off from him gave her the strength to wipe away the last of her tears. There was one last kiss- one of those slow, kind-of-tortured meetings of lips that feels a little bit like destiny- and then they walked outside together.

Darcy absentmindedly said goodbye to the other agents and Erik, giving the scientist a quick hug. Clint's fingers brushed lightly over her back as he helped her up into the truck, and then she was watching him disappear in the cloud of dust they left behind.

Jane was so busy scribbling out a to-do list for their arrival that she didn't notice Darcy's rather unusual silence. For a moment Darcy thought about coming clean and telling her everything, but instead put in her ear buds and leaned against the window.

* * *

Darcy couldn't fall asleep.

She wasn't really sure why. Their new quarters were remarkably similar to where they had been staying in New Mexico, and it wasn't like Clint had regularly stayed in her room, since Jane and Erik were such early risers. She was seriously considering counting sheep when her eyes fell on the duffle bag on her desk. Things had been so hectic that she hadn't had an opportunity to open it without Jane or Adam around.

Darcy padded across the floor to pick up the bag. It wasn't particularly large or heavy, and she knew that whatever was in it had to have been in his bedroom in the trailer. She settled back into her bed and opened up the zipper. Inside the bag she found one of his sweatshirts, a photo strip of the two of them at a carnival, an envelope with her name scrawled across it, and- her breath caught in her throat- his old dog tags.

She'd stumbled across them in his bedroom the week prior while helping him search for his keys. She had been a little surprised that he had held on to the reminder of his special ops days in the army, before he was recruited to SHIELD. (Agents, he explained, were microchipped. Like dogs. She wasn't sure if that was funny or terrifying).

He had rested his chin on her shoulder and explained that he kept them to remind himself that he had made it out of all of his missions alive, but not everyone else had been so lucky. That while he didn't always love working for SHIELD (and by 'working for SHIELD' he meant 'killing people'), he had a good thing going with people that he cared about. Seeing the tags on his dresser was a reminder of the good things in his life- what he would lose out on if he didn't make it back from a mission.

His explanation had been slow and a little fumbled. Clint was a man of action; he didn't give long speeches or flowery declarations. But she knew that, to him, the tags represented everything that he loved about his life.

And he had given them to her.

Darcy reached for the envelope with shaking fingers.

_Darcy,_

_I can't say for sure when you'll see me again, but know that whatever happens, whatever mission they send me on, I will be fighting to come home to you. Wherever you are, I will come back for you. __I wish that I had something special to give you. You deserve better than what I have. But I know that you like sleeping in my sweatshirts, and I hope that looking at pictures of us together will make you happy. I tried to explain to you why I kept my dog tags, and I'm not sure that I did a good job, but I'm giving them to you now as a promise. They were always a reminder to me that I had made it home safely. Now they can be a reminder to you, that I will see you again._

_I love you._

_Clint_

Darcy bit back a sob, knowing that Jane was right on the other side of the wall. She slipped the letter underneath her pillow and pulled on the sweatshirt and tags. She wasn't sure that she felt any better, but at least having the comforting smell of his clothing might help her sleep.

* * *

Life in Montana settled into a routine pretty quickly. Jane was doing seriously advanced science, much of it completely unprecedented, so Darcy was mostly in charge of making sure that all the important data got coded correctly and that the written reports for SHIELD were in complete sentences. It was almost reminiscent of life before the initial discovery of the bridge, when it was just her and Jane. She might have even liked Montana, if not for the fact that part of her always felt hollow.

Adam, the new intern/bodyguard, was okay. He was young enough that he could actually pass for a grad student, and generally he tried to stay out of the way. He had made some friendly overtures towards Jane and Darcy in the beginning, but seemed to accept that they were too distracted.

Clint hadn't been able to use his phone for the first few days after they left, while he was finalizing security measures for Erik's project, so when Darcy's phone buzzed on day four she assumed it was just her mom, or her old roommate. She hadn't realized just how much she was looking forward to hearing from him until some of the pain in her chest dissipated when she saw his name on the screen.

The ensuing conversation was short, and a little awkward. Darcy was a champion texter, thanks to many boring college classes where she only stayed awake by trading gossip with friends, but Clint had far less patience with his phone and leaned towards one-word replies and lots of typos that he was too lazy to fix. He was also on call 24/7, and warned her that he would have to drop out of conversations for hours at a time.

Darcy breathed out sharply through her nose. Having a boyfriend who helped save the world was really not all it was cracked up to be.

* * *

The next two weeks passed in a similar fashion. She heard from Clint often enough to almost be considered regular. Texting was not even close to comparing to being with him, but given the circumstances, it was better than nothing. He seemed to be free most often at night, and she would curl up in his sweatshirt and imagine that he was in the bed with her as they sent messages back and forth.

She told herself that she needed to get used to it, that SHIELD sent him all over the world on top secret missions, but really the whole situation kind of sucked.

On Day 19 he called her, and Darcy's immediate thought was that he was on his way to Montana. No, he told her, he was staying in New Mexico, but something had maybe gone wrong with Selvig's project and the whole site was going black for a few days. He didn't want her to worry if she didn't hear from him for a while. There was a brief pause while he talked to someone on his end, and then he said that he had to go and they had just enough time to blurt out an "I love you" before the line cut out.

The next day she casually asked any SHIELD agents she saw if there was news from New Mexico, and was consistently told that there was nothing. It occurred to her during lunch that they might not even know something was wrong, if the project was that secret.

Coulson showed up that afternoon, slightly relieving Darcy's fears, because she didn't think Coulson would have left New Mexico during a real crisis.

"I can't stay long," he said. "But Director Fury asked me to stop in and ask you to consult on another project."

Jane, of course, immediately protested that working on the bridge was taking all of her time and attention, and didn't SHIELD have a whole legion of scientists?

"The project in question is extremely time sensitive and directly related to your work," Coulson said. "There are others who could do it, but they would need briefing. You could be finished before they would even get started. And the compensation is significant."

Darcy sneaked a peek at the contract in his hand. Jane's salary offer was astronomical, and even her own cut was large enough to mostly take care of her student loans.

As it turned out, Coulson was a pretty persuasive guy, and Jane and Darcy shoved some things into suitcases and went with him to the airport. Darcy sent Clint a text message explaining where they were going; she was pretty sure that his phone was turned off, but she liked feeling like she was still connected to him.

* * *

The consulting job was at a lab that had "real" interns, who actually knew about science, so Darcy spent most of her time organizing coffee orders and goofing around online. The high-speed connection was a welcome relief after months of spotty service in the middle of nowhere, and since several of her high school acquaintances had recently gotten married there was lots of facebook stalking to be done.

One afternoon her news feed started blowing up with people posting about an alien invasion in New York. At first she thought they were all joking (or possibly high), but then her mother called her and told her to turn on the news. Before long the entire lab was clustered around the TV in the break room watching Iron Man blow up the robot looking aliens.

A flash of red in the corner of the screen had Jane on her feet. "Did you see that? He's here! Why didn't they tell me?"

Darcy reached for Jane's hand, suddenly certain that Coulson had known when he showed up in Montana, and that she and Jane were in this (conveniently underground) lab because SHIELD thought the robots might come for them.

She was trying to explain the Thor situation to the guy next to her when Jane suddenly squeezed her hand. "Darcy! Darcy, look!"

One of the news cameras had backed out enough to show an aerial shot from the top of the buildings, and they could see a small figure on a roof firing arrows. Terror flooded through Darcy as one hand went to her collar to clutch at his dog tags. She now knew where he was, and that he was alive. She just didn't know how long he would stay that way.

Jane had her cell phone pressed to her ear as she tried to contact someone at SHIELD. She kept trying for the rest of the battle, but no one picked up. Darcy stayed glued to the TV. There were semi-frequent shots of Thor and something apparently called the Hulk, but when the camera panned past the rooftops Clint was no longer there.

After what felt like hours the battle abruptly ended. Most of the scientists started cheering. When the news anchor read the official announcement that all those who had fought the invasion were alive and relatively uninjured, Jane and Darcy cheered with them.

Once the anchor had nothing new to say and returned to replaying footage from the battle, Jane yanked on Darcy's arm. "Come on. We're going to New York."


	6. Chapter 6

AN: Technically this is post-Avengers, but it still has spoilers, so... fair warning.

* * *

As it turned out, getting to New York was a little difficult. JFK, La Guardia, and Newark had all been closed during the invasion and were not yet cleared to re-open, so they flew to Syracuse and rented a car, driving overnight to the city. Shortly before they reached Manhattan, Director Fury finally called Jane's cell phone. She put him on speaker so Darcy could listen too.

"He's already gone," Fury said bluntly. "The whole thing was organized by his brother, Loki. Thor took him back to Asgard this morning."

The muscles in Jane's jaw tightened. "Why didn't you tell me he was here? Why didn't you tell us that Erik was kidnapped?"

"Dr. Selvig's work, and Thor's return here, were both highly classified matters of national security." Darcy wanted to scream 'bullshit!' but didn't think that would go over well. "We immediately moved you to a safer location, but the less you knew, the better, especially before we got Barton back."

"Barton?" Darcy blurted. "What happened to him?"

There was a long pause as Fury weighed what he should tell them. "Agent Barton and Dr. Selvig were both compromised through some kind of mind control," he said finally. "Both were recovered and appear to be back in control of themselves. But for the first two days they were forced into working for Loki, and they both know a lot about you and your work. We didn't know how much they told him."

Jane looked furious at how much had been kept from them. Darcy realized that the hurried phone call Clint had made the day that all of this started could have easily turned into their last conversation. "Where's everyone now?" Darcy asked.

"Stark Tower. I'll send you directions." There was another long pause. "Dr. Foster, we'll understand if you are no longer willing to work with SHIELD, but we are very attracted to allowing Thor to move between here and Asgard. We know that you were very close to recreating the bridge. If you're interested, Tony Stark has offered you lab space in his R&D department. He also has housing for you both."

Darcy and Jane exchanged shocked looks. "We'll think about it," Jane said finally.

"Very well." There was another long pause, and then Fury said "You should know before you get here that SHIELD suffered a lot of casualties. Asgard isn't too popular around here right now. We damn near had a riot at Phil Coulson's memorial service yesterday."

Darcy felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. "Hold up, Coulson's..."

"Yes, Miss Lewis."

They sat in silence for a moment before Fury said "If you don't have any immediate questions, we can address your future work plans when you get to New York. I'll see you soon."

Darcy leaned back into her seat, trying to process the phone call. "So, Thor was here, but now he's gone, and Erik and Clint were under mind control, but now they're not, and we actually _were_ under attack by aliens, but the- the Avengers stopped it, and Coulson's dead, and SHIELD is a bunch of assholes, but we can go live with freaking Tony Stark and keep working on the bridge."

"Sounds about right." Jane's voice sounded hollow. Darcy wondered if she was going into shock. "What do you think we should do?"

Darcy considered. "Well, I kind of want to junk-punch Fury. And I don't trust them. But if they're going to keep paying for your research..." Darcy trailed off. "Plus, it looks like Thor wants to work with them. And you have to admit, living at Stark Tower could be pretty badass."

Jane's phone beeped with the address and directions to Stark Tower. "Look at this," Darcy laughed. "It even has re-routed directions to go around the disaster zones. It's better than GPS."

When they actually hit the city they were still undecided about working with SHIELD, but they needed somewhere to stay and Jane wanted to ask them all about Thor. Darcy planned to introduce herself and then sneak off to find Clint.

* * *

Stark Tower was _insane._

Parts of it had been damaged during the battle, but there were several construction crews already scaling the sides of the building and the guy who greeted them, Happy, said that it should be good as new by the end of the week.

Darcy and Jane had quick biometric scans so that JARVIS could put them into the security clearance list, and then they took the elevator up to what Happy called 'the quarters.' Apparently all of the Avengers, minus Thor, were sharing living space on one of the higher floors. They were introduced to Steve Rogers, who reminded Darcy of a teddy bear, Bruce Banner, who Darcy would never have pegged as a giant green rage monster, and Natasha Romanoff, who somehow pulled off being both incredibly deadly and wondrously sexy at the same time.

"Tony is consulting with his architect," Natasha explained. "You may not meet him for a while, he keeps weird hours. And Clint is still sleeping off the last few days."

"What happened to him, exactly?"

"We're not entirely sure," Steve admitted. "Loki had a scepter that allowed him to control people. When he went to the New Mexico compound he took over Agent Barton and Dr. Selvig. We were able to get them both back, but apparently while Loki had them they didn't need to eat or sleep, and then we were fighting the Chitauri here in New York. So they're both in their rooms recovering."

"Which rooms do they have?" Darcy asked, trying to sound casual. "I'd like to say hi, later."

"Here, I'll show you," Bruce offered. "And I can show you where you're staying. It's on my way to the lab."

As they walked down the hallway, Darcy was vaguely aware of Jane and Bruce discussing her research. "By the way, SHIELD is sending your stuff here," he said. "Tony somehow talked them into sending a moving service."

Jane stopped walking for a moment. "We don't know if we're staying."

Bruce shrugged. "Fair enough. But I hope you do. We need more non-SHIELD scientists around here." He stopped them halfway back to the elevator. "Okay, Darcy, you're in this room, and Jane, you're next door," he explained, handing them keys. "Jane, Selvig is on your other side. Clint's in that room by the landscape painting." He brushed off both of their thanks, heading briefly towards the elevator before turning back around. "Heads up, Tony's talking about moving us to another floor so we all have apartments instead of just bedrooms. So someone might show up tomorrow to help you move."

Darcy waved a hand in understanding. Jane slumped against her door. "This is so insane. 24 hours ago we were on a consulting project. Then there was an alien invasion, and we've been invited to move into the headquarters of one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Where the hell do we go from here?"

"Who knows," Darcy groaned. "It's been a long day and I'm exhausted. I vote we sleep for a while and then meet everyone else for dinner."

"Agreed," Jane mumbled, sliding her key into the lock. "I'm turning off my phone and passing out. Knock if you need something."

"Sounds good." Darcy went into her room and stood near the door for a few minutes, wanting to make sure that Jane wouldn't leave for some reason. When she was sure that the other woman was probably in bed, she slipped back out into the hallway and headed for Clint's room.

She knocked softly on the door, not wanting anyone else to realize what she was doing. She was wondering if she should knock again when she heard shuffling footsteps. "Nat," he mumbled, "I told you, I'm-" the door swung open and he stared, evidently unable to believe his eyes. "Darcy."

"Hi," she offered a weak smile. "I guess you don't have your phone. I tried to give you a heads up."

Clint looked confused and a little nervous. "Is this real?" he finally asked, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "Because I'm having these crazy dreams, and..."

Darcy felt like her heart was breaking. Loki's mind control must have been worse than anyone realized if he was having trouble distinguishing between fact and fiction. There were deep bags under his eyes and he looked dead on his feet. Darcy took a deep breath.

"Clint, it's really me. Look," she said, pulling his dog tags out from inside of her shirt. "No one else knows about this, right? This is real. I'm here."

He hesitated for one more moment before pulling her into his arms.

Darcy felt like she was coming home. Even in his severely weakened state, Clint's arms felt warm and safe around her. Her head tucked in its usual place under his chin, and he smelled familiar, like his shampoo and gunpowder.

"I don't know about you," she whispered, "but I'm exhausted. Want to take a nap?"

"God, yes," Clint groaned. Gently he tugged her inside of his room, pulling her with him to the bed. "I could sleep for a week. The last couple of days have been _awful._"

Darcy paused in the middle of wiggling out of her jeans. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Eventually," Clint said. "But not yet." He held his arms out to her, already flopped back onto his pillows. "Right now I just want you to come here."

Darcy smiled. "I can do that." She crawled into the bed and settled herself against him, one hand coming up to trace the scrapes along his jaw. "I was so worried about you," she murmured.

His arms tightened around her. "I told you that I would come back to you, baby. I love you."

Darcy grinned into his chest. "I love you too."

* * *

Darcy woke up slowly, gradually becoming aware of the way one of Clint's hands was stroking over her hair, the other holding the curve of her waist. "Hi," she mumbled sleepily.

He laughed a little, his chest rumbling under her cheek. "Hi."

"What time is it?"

"Almost four. We're all going to dinner soon. Stark is convinced that the best way to recover from trauma is by eating."

Darcy laughed. "Hey, I fully support eating your feelings." She rolled away slightly and propped herself up so that she could see his face. "I heard about Coulson. I'm sorry."

Clint's face tightened. "Did you hear how it happened?"

"No... Fury just said that he was a casualty."

Clint took a deep breath, one hand coming up to scrub over his face. "Loki killed him during the helicarrier invasion. An invasion I led."

Darcy bit her lip, waiting for him to sort through the rest of what he wanted to say.

"I know it wasn't really me," he said finally. "It was like- like a dream, I guess, really fuzzy, and Loki was controlling everything. But he never could have broken out of that prison without a high-level agent to coordinate the attack."

"From what I hear, the Avengers couldn't have saved the world without a sniper on the rooftops to coordinate," Darcy said quietly.

Clint shrugged a bit, eyes closed. "Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't make me feel any better."

"I know, I just-" Darcy paused, trying to gather her thoughts. "Loki took you and Erik because you're special. He couldn't carry out his plans by himself, he needed to take control of the best SHIELD has to offer. And he knew that you would never, ever agree to help him, so he forced you." She leaned up, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "If he had taken me, would you let me blame myself for anything I did?"

He opened one eye, giving her a considering look. "Have you been talking to Natasha?"

Darcy laughed. "Not about this, no. Should I?"

"If you want. She's a better person than a lot of people give her credit for. It wouldn't kill her to have more lady friends."

Darcy snorted. "Did you seriously just use the phrase lady friends?"

Clint pouted. "I'm still working through psychological trauma and you're going to make fun of me?"

Darcy grinned, giving him a kiss. "Always."

She tilted her head to look at the clock and groaned when she saw the numbers. "I should go back to my room. I'm sure Jane's going to be looking for me soon."

Clint rolled out of the bed and reached for a shirt, somehow doing the whole thing in one motion without looking scripted. "You're coming with us to dinner, right?"

"I think so. Jane's kind of pissed about the Thor situation, so mostly I'm trying to make sure that she doesn't try to kill anyone." She slid back into her jeans, fiddling with her belt. "Um, are we still doing the secret romance thing?"

Clint bit the corner of his lip. "Just until things calm down a little? Fraternizing with a detailee is, y'know, frowned upon, and if one more thing happens this week to spike Fury's blood pressure I might actually die."

Darcy laughed. "You're such a rebel. What's Fury's deal, anyway?"

Clint shrugged. "He runs a top-secret government agency in charge of saving the world, and now he's trying to manage a team of super heroes. You'd be tense, too."

* * *

Darcy made it back to her room just before Jane knocked on the door. "I need to talk to you," Jane said with zero preamble.

"Um, okay. About what?"

"This whole..." Jane flapped her hands, searching for words. "This whole SHIELD thing."

Darcy waved Jane into the room, leading her to the chairs by the window. "What do you want to do?"

Jane bit her lip. "Honestly, I kind of want to stay."

Inside, Darcy was cheering, but she knew that she needed to appear skeptical. "You sure? What about the bridge?"

"I can do that from here," Jane explained. "Since the most recent opening is now in Manhattan, this is the best place for me to take new readings. And I just talked to Tony Stark, and if he follows through on even half of his promises for the lab, we could do something really revolutionary."

Darcy raised an eyebrow. "We?"

"Yes, we," Jane laughed. "They want you to stay too. Apparently they think that you are tenacious and hardworking- which is true- and they're offering you a job."

Darcy spluttered for a moment. "Doing what?"

"More or less the same thing you were doing before, just... broader. There would be a larger support staff so you would mostly just have to write briefings for me, and then they expect you to help out as needed with other administrative stuff. Something about superheroes causing lots of paperwork? But you'll like Tony and Bruce, I think."

Darcy tried to put on her best considering face. "So, we'd be living here in the Tower?"

Jane nodded. "I asked about maybe living somewhere less fancy, but it's too much of a security risk. We can stay at the Tower or at SHIELD headquarters. I haven't seen HQ yet, but I'm pretty sure the Tower is the best option."

Darcy tried to imagine what official SHIELD housing would look like and decided that the Tower was definitely the best option. "So, they're still convinced we're going to be kidnapped and have our brains sucked out?"

"Something like that," Jane laughed. "So we'll still have a detail, but I didn't think having Clint around in New Mexico was all that bad."

Darcy hid a smile. "Me neither."

* * *

Darcy decided that she was having an Oscar-worthy day.

Pepper Potts knocked on her door as she and Jane were getting off the phone with Fury. Darcy was initially intimidated by Pepper (because really, anyone who could wrangle Tony Stark, he of giant donut fame, had to be some kind of goddess) but quickly decided she liked the older woman when she produced clean clothes for them to wear to dinner.

They met the rest of the team in the lobby, and when Jane moved to give Clint a quick hug Darcy remembered that, as far as everyone else was concerned, she hadn't seen or talked to him since New Mexico. So she hugged him as well, making it as awkward-looking as possible, and knew from the amusement in his eyes that she had succeeded.

Tony had arranged for a private room in one of the few undamaged restaurants in the area, and insisted loudly that he was thinking of buying the place, so everyone should order lots of food to make sure it didn't totally suck. Pepper rolled her eyes and whispered to Darcy that he said that everywhere, thinking that it got them better service. Darcy stifled a laugh.

Tony, it turned out, was convinced that there was something going on between Clint and Natasha. From an objective standpoint, she could kind of see where Tony was coming from. The agents worked well together, and clearly trusted each other, but Darcy was not thrilled at the billionaire trying to set her boyfriend up with another woman. She couldn't start a cat fight because Natasha could probably kill her in two seconds, so she ordered a margarita and sulked.

(After the third time Natasha 'accidentally' spilled a drink all over Tony, Darcy decided that Clint's idea of being Natasha's lady friend had merit.)

Since she couldn't go to the other end of the table and sit in Clint's lap like she wanted to, she decided to flirt with Steve instead. In retrospect that was a really bad idea, since Tony then declared that they would make an adorable couple and offered to send them on vacation for a weekend, but watching Steve deal with the situation was comedy gold. He'd blushed at her (relatively tame) advances, then lost his temper at Tony and snapped that he wasn't interested in Darcy, goddammit, then blushed profusely again, thinking that he had offended her by not being interested. Darcy shook with silent laughter and assured Steve that she wasn't offended and would still like to be friends.

Near the end of the meal Clint cornered her in the hallway near the bathrooms.

"There's absolutely nothing going on between me and Natasha," he told her seriously. "Tony's an idiot."

Darcy smiled up at him. "I know. I'm not interested in Steve, by the way."

"Well that's a relief," Clint teased. "I was worried I was going to have to challenge him in single combat, and since he's an actual super hero he would kick my ass."

Darcy pressed her face into his chest to muffle her laughter. "Let's keep the fighting over me to a minimum," she suggested. "Although I might follow Natasha's example and start spilling drinks on people."

Clint dropped his head down to hers, giving her a quick kiss. "We might have to get you into agent training."

Darcy snorted. "That's the mother of terrible ideas. I'll stick to being an administrative minion." She batted her eyelashes up at him. "Did you hear that I still need a security detail?"

"Yeah. I guess we're stuck with each other."

"What a shame," Darcy whispered as he leaned down to kiss her again.

Things got a little heated, and only the fact that Tony was incapable of doing anything quietly alerted them to the fact that he was about to find them. Darcy quickly pulled away and then stumbled into Clint, giving a convincing show that she was a little too intoxicated for her heels. (She was also, maybe, possibly covering for the fact that her boobs were no longer inside of her dress. Not that she would ever admit to being in such a state in public.)

Tony, who actually _was_ pretty intoxicated, clapped Clint and the shoulder and told him to 'get the hottie to her seat.' Clint rolled his eyes, but good-naturedly played along and half-carried Darcy back to the table.

When they got back to the Tower she counted to five hundred and snuck down the hall to his room. He answered the door almost immediately after she knocked, and quickly pulled her inside to pin her against the wall.

As her dress hit the floor, Darcy decided that living in the Tower was going to be _awesome_.

* * *

AN: In addition to Darcy/Clint, I ship Clint/Natasha and Darcy/Steve, and just couldn't resist alluding to those pairings. I have no self control.


	7. Chapter 7

As Clint and Darcy stood hand-in-hand in Director Fury's office two weeks after she arrived at Stark Tower, she found herself wondering just how big the vein in his forehead could get. She was incredibly tempted to ask Clint if he might go totally blind via his other eye exploding, but somehow that seemed like a poor life choice. She would ask him later.

New York was almost totally cleaned up, if not yet re-built, and Jane had finally figured out the calibration, or whatever, to allow the bridge to re-open, so SHIELD had a pretty festive air. Clint had shown up at her desk earlier in the day to suggest talking to Fury. "He's still going to kill me," he said cheerfully, "But he's in a great mood so he might do it quickly."

Darcy had let Clint do most of the talking. Aside from their hand-holding his posture was pure military, and his recounting of their relationship was pretty clinical. She answered an occasional question- usually from Maria Hill, who looked exasperated but amused- but generally kept her mouth shut. If they wanted to fire her, she could find something else to do with her life, maybe go finally finish up her degree. Clint had a lot more on the line.

He wrapped up the story and gave her hand a quick squeeze. Fury, Hill, and Banks (who was apparently Coulson's replacement) all stared at them for a moment before Fury heaved a huge sigh.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, voice brittle, "That when we sent you to New Mexico to run point on security for a top-secret mission with enormous ramifications for international security, you decided to carry out your duties by sleeping with a college student?"

Darcy flushed. Clint's hand squeezed hers again. "I wouldn't characterize it like that, sir," he said. "Agent Coulson and Dr. Foster agreed on my cover as an intern without any input from me. Becoming close with Darcy was an unintended side effect of the mission, although not one that I regret. Sir."

Darcy was almost positive that Agent Hill was hiding a smile. She couldn't tell what Agent Banks was thinking. His face was totally expressionless. Was that a requirement for the position? Coulson had never had an expression either.

Agent Banks cleared his throat. "Miss Lewis," he said slowly, "As a necessary point of clarification, you entered into this fraternization of your own free will? There was no coercion involved?"

Darcy stared at him, absolutely horrified. "Of course it was my own free will, he didn't- he wouldn't-" She made herself take a deep breath, focusing on the way Clint's thumb was rubbing her hand. "This was my choice. He didn't forceme."

Agent Hill held up mollifying hands. "It's a necessary question, given... past situations." She exchanged a quick look with Fury and Banks. "Why don't you wait outside while we discuss this?"

Darcy let Clint tug her out of the room, mind whirling. "What the hell?" she hissed as soon as the door closed. "Why would they think you were forcing me? What past situations was she talking about?"

He sighed, leading her to some chairs. "Nothing you really need to worry about," he said finally. "SHIELD has anti-fraternization policies for a reason. There were... issues... with other agents on guard details blackmailing civilians, making them think that they needed to provide some sort of payment in order to keep receiving protection."

"So they think that I was whoring myself out to you so that I wouldn't die?" Darcy's voice was brittle. She wondered if she was going into shock. Clint knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his.

"No, Darcy, no one thinks this is your fault. I'm older than you, and I'm the agent. They think that I took advantage of you." He paused, giving her a half-smile. "And Fury is probably convinced that I delayed the project somehow by spending time with you when I should have been working."

"Right, like you actually understood any of Jane's science talk," she muttered. He grinned.

"Exactly." He leaned up, brushing his thumbs along her cheekbones. She sighed, slumping forward so that her face was in his neck.

"This sucks," she said finally. "We should have kept going with the secret romance thing."

"Someone would have figured it out eventually," he pointed out. "And we have a little bargaining power now. SHIELD is desperate to hang on to Jane until she figures out how to fully stabilize the bridge, and she won't stay without you. Plus Thor seems to think you're some kind of valiant shield-maiden worthy of his protection, and Fury isn't going to risk war with Asgard over us." He paused. "I don't think."

"Nice to know your brain still works, Agent Barton." Fury's voice was acidic, but marginally less furious. Clint immediately sprang to his feet, military posture taking over again. Darcy thought about standing, but wasn't entirely sure that her legs hold her.

"I should fire both your asses," Fury continued, "But since Miss Lewis is now a SHIELD employee rather than a civilian, your relationship no longer violates the fraternization policy. If there is _any _hint that you are distracting each other from your duties, one of you will be permanently reassigned as far away as I can get you. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir," Clint said. Darcy nodded.

Fury turned on his heel and stalked back into his office, slamming the door behind him. Banks ignored both of them, going past them to the elevators. Hill smiled at them and offered Darcy a hand up. "He'll calm down," she said. "In the meantime, I'd worry about how you're going to tell everyone else."

Clint groaned. "Stark is going to be completely obnoxious."

* * *

Tony was, indeed, obnoxious. Despite the fact that he had been convinced that Clint and Natasha were secretly dating while trying to set Darcy up with Steve, he insisted on yelling "I knew it!" and doing a victory dance, complete with football spiking motions. The look on Bruce's face when he started dancing almost made the whole experience with Fury worth it.

Everyone else was fairly predictable. Jane gave Darcy sad puppy eyes and wanted to know why she hadn't known sooner. Natasha gave Clint a too-sweet smile and asked him if they were still on for sparring later. (Darcy was convinced that Natasha might kill her, but Clint assured her that Natasha was just mad that he had been lying to her.) Steve, who seemed to feel some sort of personal responsibility for Darcy (probably thanks to Tony constantly locking them in small spaces together over the past two weeks) patted her shoulder and said that she should come talk to him if Clint ever got 'fresh' with her. Darcy wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but hey, Captain America had just offered to beat up her boyfriend, which was pretty cool. Bruce said that he didn't think it was any of his business, but he was happy for them. Thor clapped Clint on the shoulder, knocking him to the floor, and boomed that the Lady Darcy was a worthy companion indeed.

A surprising number of SHIELD employees seemed interested in their relationship. There was a party of sorts later that day to celebrate Thor's return to earth (and seriously, a bunch of SHIELD agents at a kegger was the best reality TV show premise Darcy had ever heard of), and random people kept coming up to her to ask about Clint. She was starting to understand why celebrities hated the paparazzi so much.

They finally escaped out to a balcony together as things were winding down, huddled together as they leaned against the railing.

"So, today wasn't too bad, right?" Clint said.

Darcy considered. "Well, we're alive, and employed. I'll call that a win."

She was leaning up to kiss him when his phone started beeping with the emergency tone that meant the Avengers were needed immediately. Tony stuck his head out on the balcony and yelled "Duty calls!"

Clint sighed, shaking his head. "I have to go. I'll come find you as soon as we get back."

Darcy followed him back inside, going to stand next to Jane, who was waving goodbye to Thor. "Our lives are strange," Darcy said.

"Would you really want it any other way?"

Darcy grinned. "Nah."

* * *

Things went great for a while. Since they were both SHIELD employees it was easy to meet up for lunch or the occasional self-defense lesson. Clint also developed the habit of randomly yanking Darcy into supply closets to make out. While this meant that she kept having to go back to her desk in a rather hot-and-bothered state, it also made the work day go by a lot faster. The best part about the whole situation was that Tony, who viewed himself as the Yente of the Avengers, put them in the same suite. Technically they had separate bedrooms and office spaces, but Clint spent almost every night in Darcy's bed.

One day the Avengers got called out on what was supposed to be a routine mission that turned deadly fast. Jane, Pepper, and Darcy wound up together in a holding room, getting infrequent updates from agents who stuck their heads in on their way to the situation room. Darcy was huddled in a little ball of worry on the couch. Occasionally they tried to make small talk, but mostly they sat in silence, Pepper twisting her engagement ring, Jane clinging to her hammer necklace, and Darcy clenching her hand so hard around the chain of Clint's dog tags that she started losing circulation in her fingers.

Hours of choked back tears later, an exhausted looking Maria Hill came into the room. "They're all alive," she said in anticipation of the question.

"How is everyone?" Darcy managed.

"Thor and Stark are essentially fine, though he's got some work to do on the suit. Banner's okay- exhausted, but the Hulk can't really get hurt. Rogers took a nasty hit to the head, but the rapid-heal in the serum seems to be working. Romanoff broke her arm early on, so that kept her out of most of the fight." Maria hesitated for a moment. "Barton's pretty bad. He got caught in a collapsing building. Multiple breaks and fractures, a lot of blood loss, and we think probably a concussion, but he hasn't woken up yet so we can't be sure."

Jane immediately started pressing for more information, while Pepper offered to fly in specialists from wherever necessary. Darcy couldn't move. She couldn't think. She couldn't hear anything but her pulse pounding in her ears and couldn't remember anything but their last moment before he left, when he kissed her goodbye and promised that she could pick the movie that night. There might not be a movie that night. There might not be a movie any night.

"Darcy?" Jane's voice sounded terrified. "Darcy, honey, take a deep breath."

Darcy broke through the haze enough to realize that the three women were looking at her with great concern. "What?" She blinked several times, suddenly aware of the flood of tears streaming down her face. "I just- Clint- what if he-"

She couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't finish the thought, and thank goodness for Jane who said "Where are they?"

"They should be nearly here by now," Maria said. "They'll be going to the Med Bay. Wing A."

Darcy immediately shoved herself up onto her feet. As terrified as she was, Clint needed her. She was going to be there.

* * *

The four women beat the team to the Med Bay. The place was in a stage of controlled crisis; the doctors and nurses appeared to be running in circles as they prepared the infirmary for the Avengers. Darcy tried not to listen too closely; she didn't want to hear too many comments about Clint's injuries.

They jumped to their feet when the team came in, all being pushed on stretchers by SHIELD medics. Five of the six managed some form of greeting. Darcy ignored them, standing on her tiptoes to get a glimpse of Clint and immediately wishing that she hadn't.

It looked like he was still unconscious. Pieces of his uniform were missing, and the medics were busy cutting away the rest of it so that they could reach all of his injuries. His face was a mass of bruises and lacerations, and his right arm hung at an unnatural angle. As they pushed through the swinging doors into surgery, someone got an oxygen mask over his face.

"Oh, God," Darcy gasped. "Ohgodohgodohgodohgod."

There was nothing to do but wait. Darcy refused to talk to anyone. Jane pestered the doctors for updates, but all they knew (or were willing to tell) was that he was still being stitched up, that his condition was critical, but appeared to be stabilizing.

Darcy never knew just how long they waited. She huddled in a chair under a blanket that Pepper had somehow produced, refusing offers for food or hot chocolate. At some point she pulled his dog tags out of her pocket and started running the chain through her fingers like a rosary.

Eventually they were joined by the rest of the team. With the exception of Natasha's sling, they could have just come from a tough sparring practice rather than an actual battle. Darcy wondered if they felt guilty.

When the woman with the Chief of Surgery insignia on her lab coat came out into the waiting area, everyone else jumped up. Darcy was too terrified to move. The doctor held up her hands, forestalling the obvious question. "He's going to be okay."

Tony whooped. Natasha slumped forward, her head in her uninjured hand. Darcy still couldn't move.

"He's out of surgery, and stable. We've replaced most of the lost blood and set the broken bones. The kevlar protected him from major internal injuries, but his ribs are going to be tender for a while."

"What about the concussion? How much does he remember?" Natasha's voice sounded hollow.

"Well, he does have a concussion, but it seems low-grade. We'll obviously monitor his cognitive abilities for a while, but he woke up briefly and remembered the battle right up until the building started to go." She paused, moving forward to place a hand on Darcy's shoulder. "Miss Lewis, he asked for you earlier. He's still under the anesthesia right now but we think you should be there when he wakes up."

That, finally, got Darcy moving. "Okay."

There was some discussion between everyone else about the possibility of someone staying with Darcy, but eventually they went back to their quarters. The team was just too tired to stay up; they needed time to recover. Jane and Pepper both offered to stay, but Darcy sent them with Thor and Tony. She wanted to be alone with him.

The doctors had dragged an extra cot into Clint's room, in case she decided that she wanted to sleep. She ignored it in favor of the chair next to his bed. She finally slipped the dog tags back around her neck as she reached for him instead. His right side looked to have taken the brunt of the fall; his other side, on which she was seated, didn't look so critical. She wrapped both of her hands around his left and resisted the urge to brush her fingers over his face, his ribs. The noise of the machines was oddly soothing, and Darcy closed her eyes and listened to her breath and the beeping that meant his heart was still working, waiting for him to wake up.

* * *

"Baby?" His voice was so weak that she could barely hear him.

"_Clint._" Darcy leaned forward, scooting her chair as close to the bed as possible. "Oh God, you're- well, you're not okay, but you're alive, and you-" Darcy cut herself off, choking on her tears. She felt like an idiot. He was the one that was hurt, had almost died, and here she was making a scene. "I was so worried, and I saw you come in, and they wouldn't tell us anything, and I think Tony might have hacked into your medical file, but I'm not really sure." She paused. "Also, I love you. Please don't leave me?"

Clint's hand squeezed hers. "I told you I wouldn't let anything happen to you," he rasped out slowly. "I won't ever leave you. As long as you want me here."

Darcy beamed at him, leaning over to place a kiss on his palm, before turning at the sound of the opening door. "Hey, Dr. Reynolds. He's awake."

"Well, would you look at that," Dr. Reynolds chuckled. Darcy liked Dr. Reynolds. He hadn't tried to talk to her too much, and he had chased off the nurses who kept trying to get her to sleep. "Agent Barton, how do you feel?"

"Like I fell off a building."

Darcy's smile grew. "You're being sassy! You must be okay."

"I am not being sassy." Clint's petulant voice just didn't sound the same when he was still raspy.

"Now, now, children," the doctor chided as he read something on one of the monitors. "Miss Lewis, I need to kick you out for a minute so that I can examine him."

"Okay." Darcy leaned over to brush her lips on an unscathed corner of Clint's forehead. "I'll be right back."

Darcy took advantage of the deserted hallway to do her Happy Dance before sending off a mass text that Clint had woken up again. She also suggested that everyone wait until visiting hours the next morning before they came back. He needed more sleep.

Dr. Reynolds joined her in the hallway with relatively good news. "Well, I think he's going to make a full recovery. We were worried about the concussion but he seems pretty responsive. Are you planning on staying the rest of the night?"

Darcy blushed and nodded. "If it's okay with you."

Dr. Reynolds gave her a knowing smile. "He needs to be woken up every two hours to make sure that he stays alert. Agent Barton has been my patient before, and he gets pretty cranky with the nurses. If I leave the timer with you, can you keep an eye on him?"

Darcy looked horrified. "What if I hurt him? What if he _dies_?"

"Miss Lewis, he is not going to die. His vitals will be monitored at the nurses' station. All you need to do is wake him up and have a quick conversation to make sure that he doesn't have any confusion or memory loss. Frankly you will be in the most danger."

Darcy snickered. The doctor had a point; Clint liked his sleep. "Okay. I'll get him up."

* * *

The first time the clock started buzzing, Clint was awake anyway. He had been drifting in and out of sleep while also debating the merits of the various Rocky movies with Darcy. She let go of his hand long enough to re-set the alarm, then went back to the conversation.

The second time the alarm went off they had both been dozing. It was either very late at night or very early in the morning, and Darcy bit back a yawn as she shook Clint awake. He was cranky but lucid, and insisted on a kiss before they went back to sleep.

The third time she had to threaten to pour water on him before Clint opened his eyes. "This is stupid," he declared. "I don't have any brain damage."

"That's what you think," Darcy muttered. "Do you need anything?"

"Darcy," Clint tugged on her hand. "Will you lay down with me?"

"Are you kidding me? Half your bones are broken!"

"I know. My ribs hurt. You would make me feel better." Darcy had to give it to him, he had a great pouty face. She sighed and stood.

"This is a really bad idea."

Fortunately his bed was pretty wide, and there was enough space for her to squeeze in on his left side, as long as she didn't roll onto her stomach or back. She knew that he wanted to hold her, but there was no way he could do that without hurting himself. Instead she put their interlaced fingers over his heart and brushed her nose over her shoulder.

"I love you, baby," Clint mumbled.

Darcy smiled, feeling the chain of his dog tags against her collar. "I love you too."

The fourth time the alarm went off, Darcy opened her eyes to find the rest of the team, complete with Jane and Pepper, staring down at them. She had a distinct feeling that they had been talking about her and Clint until the clock started beeping. "Uh, hi guys." She tried to get up without moving Clint, but of course he was a stubborn bastard and wouldn't let go of her hand. "Hey, Clint. Wake up. You have visitors."

"It's too early for visitors," he mumbled.

Natasha, ever the caring partner, dipped her fingers into the glass of water next to his bed and flicked them at his face. "We all dragged ourselves out of bed because we were worried. The least you could do is say hello."

Clint glared up at her. "Hello."

"So, how are you feeling?" Jane asked brightly. Darcy was pretty sure that she had also kicked Thor's ankle, but it was too early to be deciphering Jane's non-verbal communication.

Clint wiggled a little bit. "Not too bad. My ribs hurt like a bitch, and _someone _kept waking me up all night, but I'm all right."

Darcy rolled her eyes. "_Someone _was following instructions from the doctors. I should have let you have a hemorrhage."

"Nah, you'd miss me," Clint said, somehow managing a shit-eating grin despite all the bruises.

Natasha looked marginally less murderous. "You're both morons," she declared.

Dr. Reynolds, bless him, came to the rescue. "Everyone out! I need to examine my patient." He extended a hand to Darcy to help her off the bed. "Miss Lewis, any brain damage?"

"Loads," Darcy said, ignoring Clint's sputtering. "You might need to re-program him."

"I'll take that under consideration," Dr. Reynolds said, chivvying everyone else out the door. Darcy bent down to give Clint a quick kiss.

"I probably have work to do, but I'll be back later, okay?" she whispered.

"You sure you can't stay?" he asked.

"Fury insists on no special treatment, remember? I'll stop by on my lunch break."

* * *

AN: Dr. Reynolds might be my favorite OC. He comes up again later.


	8. Chapter 8

AN: Back to some movie times! Movies referenced: All three Lord of the Rings films. There is no good way for me to summarize them, so... questing and battles! Watching the extended editions back-to-back really does take about 12 hours. Spoilers for a couple of moments throughout, but nothing that would ruin the movies if you haven't seen them yet.

Also, I am probably fudging timelines a bit with Clint's recovery process. I can't quite decide what I think his injuries are, and also you know SHIELD has to have some crazy whacked-out medical shit that would make people heal faster. Seriously, if Suzanne Collins can invent something that heals broken ribs overnight, I can invent imaginary technology that fits this story. Deus ex machina for the win!

* * *

Five days after the battle, Darcy stalked into Clint's room with a scowl on her face.

"You are a terrible patient," she announced.

Clint looked up from the arts-and-crafts project in his lap, which looked to be some sort of slingshot. "Huh?"

"Dr. Reynolds didn't tell you? You have become such a huge pain in the ass that I've been temporarily re-assigned to medical. Congratulations."

Clint stared. "I don't get it."

Darcy huffed. "Between you staging an escape attempt last night and _making a nurse cry _this morning, they decided that you needed a babysitter. So now I'm stuck here until you're discharged."

"I made her cry?" Clint looked ashamed, which made Darcy feel slightly less homicidal. "I didn't mean to make her cry. Is she okay?"

"I brought up a peace offering, although now Jane is probably going to kill me for giving away her Pop Tarts. I expect you to apologize later."

"Okay." Clint looked momentarily subdued, then perked up. "Wait, you're going to be here all the time now?"

"Apparently. I still have paperwork to do on the settlement claims from that building, so they're bringing me some kind of desk. Fury was quite clear that I'm not here to entertain you, just to backhand you if you do something stupid."

"He gets way too excited about corporal punishment," Clint muttered.

* * *

After half an hour of trying to work out of Clint's hospital room, Darcy was also getting excited about the idea of corporal punishment. While she generally loved Clint's adventurous disposition, having him bed-ridden just a few feet away from her makeshift work space was incredibly annoying. Within the first ten minutes she had confiscated everything within his reach that was not nailed down, including the slingshot (which, how the hell had he constructed a slingshot, and then used it, with one hand in a cast?). She had also taken the remote after he insisted on watching daytime talk shows and loudly offering advice to the crazies on Jerry Springer.

She had handed him both her Nook and her iPod, hoping that the combination of her e-book collection and some classic rock would keep him quiet for a while, but that was also a no go. He found one of the romance novels that she secretly read on the sly and started reading it out loud, complete with sound effects during the more passionate scenes. After the third time a nurse came rushing in thinking that he was hurt, Darcy took away his reading privileges. The iPod was marginally less annoying, because _of course _he insisted on singing along at the top of his lungs, but he actually had a pretty good voice. Darcy made it through a decent chunk of her work by pretending that she was listening to a karoke station on Pandora before Clint realized that she was ignoring him.

"I'm bored." Brief pause. "Darcy! Darcy, I'm bored."

"Are you fucking kidding me? You sound like a little kid after ten minutes in the car. Be quiet, I'm trying to concentrate."

"But Darcy," he gave a pretty convincing lip quiver, "They're weaning me off the pain meds and my ribs hurt, and I don't have anything to distract me."

"That's your own fault," Darcy pointed out. "You could be watching tv, or reading, or listening to music. It's not my fault that you're immature."

"I've had drill sergeants that were nicer than you."

"Well, go bother one of them."

"You know, I kind of like this side of you," Clint grinned. "Want to lock the door and have some fun?"

Darcy didn't even look up from her paperwork. "Your ribs hurt so much that you need a distraction, but you want me to tie you to the bed and have my way with you?"

"You have to admit, the idea has merit."

"Clint," Darcy groaned. "If I don't get this to Hill by the end of the day I'm going to be fired. Or shot. Or possibly both. So can you please be quiet?" She gave him her best sad face. "Please?"

Clint flopped back into his pillows. He still looked mutinous, but Darcy figured that breaking out the sad face would guilt him into at least half an hour of silence.

Twenty-eight minutes later he was starting to get a little fidgety. Darcy was considering taking pity on him and offering to play a few hands of poker when Dr. Reynolds poked his head in.

"Hello, Darcy. Is it safe for me to come in, or will Agent Barton bite my head off?"

Clint had the good grace to look ashamed. Darcy bit back a laugh. "No promises, but I think you're safe."

Dr. Reynolds checked over Clint's chart and something on one of the monitors before poking at Clint's ribs. Darcy took advantage of Clint's distraction with the examination to finish copy-editing the memo she was writing.

"Hmm," Dr. Reynolds said.

"Hmm?" Clint sounded a little worried. "What does that mean?"

Darcy was torn between rolling her eyes and giving him a hug. While he would never admit it, she knew that his obnoxious behavior was largely due to his terror that he wouldn't be able to recover to field agent status.

"It means that we may be able to discharge you today."

"Really?" Clint and Darcy said together.

Dr. Reynolds had gone back to Clint's chart, scrawling something in the corner. "You won't be able to go back to your residence. We'll want to keep you in the temporary housing here at HQ so that you're accessible to the Med Bay. But I think your recovery would go faster if you were somewhere more comfortable."

Clint looked absolutely ecstatic. "Doc, you are my new favorite person. I hereby grant to you my slingshot! Assuming, of course, that you can get it back from Agent Bossy over there."

Darcy and Dr. Reynolds shared an exasperated look before the doctor cleared his throat. "Darcy, would you be willing to stay with him? He'll need assistance with some things and I don't think any of our outpatient nurses would be willing to work with him."

Darcy snorted. "Typical. Yeah, I can stay with him, if it's okay with Fury."

"I'm sure we can get it cleared since he was planning on having you work out of the Med Bay," Dr. Reynolds said. "And the temp apartments have actual desks, so you might be a little more productive."

Darcy looked over at Clint, who was making a valiant attempt to remove his IV without either of them noticing. "I wouldn't count on that."

* * *

By mid-morning Darcy had finally wrangled Clint to their new accommodations. Discharging him had been a complicated process, as he insisted on walking around the unit to personally apologize to all of the nurses. By the end of it they were convinced that he was adorable and well-behaved. Darcy was getting a good idea of how he operated undercover.

His lower body injuries had been pretty minimal, so he was able to walk to the apartment and explore the small space while Darcy took over the coffee table with her files and queued up a DVD.

"You know, this place isn't that bad," he called from the kitchen. "They even stocked it with some food. It's all healthy stuff, though. I vote we order in. Chinese?"

Darcy laughed. "If you can leave me alone long enough to finish all of this, I will order Chinese."

"Deal." Clint came into the living room with a six-pack of something or other (considering that he was still on a small dose of pain medication, Darcy hoped it was non-alcoholic) and carefully settled onto the couch. "You brought movies?"

"Yeah, I was thinking that your hospital room might be one of the cool ones with a DVD player. Technically this is sort of one really long movie, but it should keep you busy for a while."

"What is it?" Clint sounded suspicious.

"The extended editions of The Lord of the Rings movies."

"Isn't that, like, twenty hours of movie?"

"Don't be ridiculous. It can't be more than ten or twelve hours."

"How much paperwork do you have?" Clint sounded horrified.

Darcy laughed. "Not that much. I happen to love these movies, and no one ever wants to sit through them with me. Fortunately you don't have a choice!" She leaned over and kissed him, making him look slightly less indignant. "With any luck I'll get through this by the end of Fellowship."

He sighed, leaning back into the cushions. "What's this about, anyway?"

Darcy considered. "It's kind of hard to summarize. There's an intro scene that explains the background." She smiled, nudging him a little with her hip. "C'mon, you might like it. One of the main characters is an archer."

As she expected, Clint was a little wriggly for the first couple of minutes, but became absorbed when the flash-back battle sequence started. He mercifully kept his full attention on the movie, allowing Darcy to plow through the rest of her work. By the time the credits rolled, she was binder-clipping the files together in preparation for taking them down to Agent Hill's office.

"This is actually pretty good," Clint admitted. "So, are you done? Chinese?"

Darcy laughed. "Yes, I'm done. I need to go deliver this. Can you handle the food?"

She ran into Steve in the elevator and realized that the team might not know about Clint's pseudo discharge. She quickly filled him in and invited everyone else to come watch the rest of the series with them. "Clint's probably ordered an obnoxious amount of food," she pointed out. "You could help with the leftovers." Steve laughed and promised to pass along the message.

Fury, as per usual, held her up as he demanded to know exactly how much the building collapse fiasco was going to cost SHIELD, and then lectured her about the importance of getting Clint back into the field as soon as possible. Apparently Darcy was going to be held personally responsible if anything went wrong in his recovery.

Awesome.

By the time she made it back up to the apartment, Clint was impatiently salivating over the small mountain of food taking up all the counter space. "I wasn't sure what you wanted, so I got everything," he said cheerfully.

Darcy shook her head. "I'm going to be eating leftover Chinese for the next week, aren't I?"

"Nah. Four days, max. Two if Thor shows up."

The positive side to the truly ridiculous amount of food was that she didn't need to fight him for egg rolls or crab rangoons, and in short order they were back in front of the tv to watch The Two Towers.

The middle film had always been Darcy's least favorite of the series (not that the distinction meant much, since it was still in her top ten overall), and she found herself spending more time watching Clint's reactions than the movie itself. He had clearly become invested in the characters (though she doubted he would admit it) and she was having visions of Clint, Tony, and Thor going as Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli at Halloween.

Once they had stuffed themselves on the Chinese food she curled up next to him, his left arm warm around her shoulders. It wasn't quite their normal position for movie watching- he was still too sore to really cuddle- but the whole situation felt pretty normal considering that they were in an antiseptic-smelling apartment just one floor down from the hospital.

When they got to the scene where Aragorn dreamed about Arwen after falling into the river, Darcy tipped her head up to look at him. "Do you ever have moments like that? When you get hurt in fights, do you just black out, or do you dream?"

Clint smiled down at her. "I never used to. This last time, when the building fell, I was thinking about you."

Darcy blushed a little. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. We had plans for that night, remember? I was hoping that you wouldn't be too mad that I was going to have to cancel."

Darcy narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You're lying."

"Yep." He ducked her playful swat. "I was actually hoping that you wouldn't be too worried. I know that day wasn't easy for you."

"It's part of the job," Darcy said quietly. "I'm just glad that you're okay."

* * *

The rest of the team showed up towards the end of the movie. Clint waved a vague hello, remaining focused on the battle on the TV.

Fortunately, epic battle sequences were apparently enthralling to all of the super heroes, and before long they were all staring at the screen. When the movie ended they took a quick break to raid the leftovers in the fridge before settling in to watch the final film. Everyone else had seen the movies before (and Darcy was totally going to tease Clint later about the fact that both Thor and Steve had seen a movie that he hadn't) so Darcy was spared having to summarize the earlier plot points.

The way half the team was squished into the couch meant that Darcy was shoved halfway onto Clint's lap. She'd worried she was hurting him until he leaned in to place a sucking kiss behind her ear, pulling back with a wicked smile.

Well.

Apparently he was healing quickly.

Battling off advances from Clint was a regular occurrence during movie nights. When it was just the two of them, she was generally more than happy to make out on the couch like she had when she was a teenager. With everyone else there, she was determined to keep G-rated.

Clint was evidently smart enough to know that Darcy wouldn't want him to be too handsy with everyone else in the room (alternate theory: he was afraid of Jane's mama-bear routine). Nonetheless, by the movie's halfway point, she had shifted so that her legs were swung over his thighs, head pillowed on his shoulder. His uninjured arm was wrapped around her, and his broken right hand rested on her knee. Every so often (usually at an emotional point in the movie, not that she would ever get him to admit it), his head dipped down to brush a kiss on her forehead. When they reached the point where Sam carried Frodo up the mountain, she anticipated his move and tilted her head up to kiss him properly.

She was a little surprised that he stayed awake for the whole movie, considering how late it was when it finished and the combination of the dim lighting and his medication. He joined in the post-movie chatter, but was clearly fading fast. She shooed everyone else out, promising Jane that they would have coffee soon, and pulled him up off the couch.

"C'mon, time for bed."

He obediently leaned on her as they shuffled their way into the bedroom. She snickered as Clint face-planted into the mattress and then groaned.

"I appreciate your sympathy," he mumbled.

"You're the one who got himself kicked out of the hospital and then fell on a SHIELD-quality mattress," she pointed out. "Do you need anything?"

He somehow managed to roll over and wriggle out of his sweatpants in one motion. "A magic spell so we can go back home."

Darcy rolled her eyes. "I'll get right on that."

Somewhere out in the living room was a bag with her clothes and toiletries for the next few days, but the bed looked really inviting and the living room seemed too far away. She slipped off her pants and maneuvered out of her bra without taking off her shirt (which, predictably, got a wolf whistle out of Clint).

"Nothing you can do about it," she pointed out as she rearranged her pillows. "You're not cleared for sex."

"What's your point?"

Darcy took a moment to respond, distracted by the way the fingers of his good hand were sliding along her stomach just over the top of her underwear. "My point is that you're going to feel really stupid if you have to tell Dr. Reynolds that you hurt yourself getting me off."

"He'd understand," Clint claimed.

"Fury won't. Do you want me to disappear forever?"

"SHIELD doesn't actually make people disappear," Clint pointed out. "You would just have some kind of accident."

"Whatever, you're still not getting any until Doc says it's okay."

Clint successfully pretended to be angry with her for three minutes, then scooted to the middle of the bed so that they were pressed together.

"This sucks," he huffed. "I'm going to quit being a superhero and get a desk job."

"You would hate a desk job. You'd have to behave yourself and nothing would ever explode."

Clint grinned, reaching for her hand. "You know me so well."

* * *

AN: I might have had entirely too much fun imagining the havoc an infirmary full of stir-crazy Avengers would wreak. I decided that injured!Clint was enough for the doctors to deal with.


	9. Chapter 9

Being out of the hospital, even if it was just to temporary housing, and with the proviso that he had to go for check-ups and physical therapy every day, greatly improved Clint's mood. He was still a little stir crazy, but for the most part he let Darcy get her work done in peace. Tony had somehow hooked Jarvis into their TV system, so they had a truly ridiculous collection of movies at their disposal. Plus, Natasha took pity on her and came over every afternoon to kick Clint's ass at video games.

His bruises had almost entirely faded when Darcy was sent away for a long weekend. Jane and Bruce were presenting a paper at some conference or other, and Fury wanted someone to go with them that knew how to use all the fancy features on the SHIELD-provided cell phones and wouldn't freak out (or Hulk out) on airline employees if the flight got delayed.

Clint pouted, but there was nothing she could do. He was spending most of his time in physical therapy, anyway, trying to regain full mobility. While she appreciated that he had gotten used to her presence (because really, she would wake up next to him every day if she had her choice), she trusted Steve and Natasha to keep him entertained. Besides, sleeping next to him every night without being able to sleep _with_ him was seriously frazzling her nerves.

Having a weekend away turned out to be pretty nice. Bruce was content to spend his time attending every possible panel, so Jane and Darcy had lots of time to shop and catch up over coffee.

After a truly ridiculous adventure to several high-end shoe stores, Jane sat Darcy down at a corner table in a Starbucks with That Look in her eye.

"I want to talk to you," Jane announced. "About Clint."

"Uh, okay."

"I was watching you during the Lord of the Rings marathon," ('I knew it!' thought Darcy) "And I talked to Thor and Natasha, and everyone's noticed how you two are never apart. I know you care for him, but he's a lot older than you, and you really need to be sure before you start getting really serious with someone, especially someone who's in such a dangerous job-"

Darcy fiddled with the cardboard sleeve on her coffee cup and zoned out. When it sounded like Jane was winding down, Darcy smiled and reached across the table to grab the other woman's hand.

"Jane, I love him." She paused for a moment to let that sink in. "I know that SHIELD is dangerous and that he might get hurt, or killed," her voice broke a bit on that part, "and yeah, I kind of wish that he had a desk job, but this is my life now."

Jane sat back in her chair, giving Darcy a measuring look. "When did you get so grown up?"

"Well, I did do this internship with a crazy-smart astrophysicist, and I know some people that save the world on a regular basis..." That, finally, got Jane to laugh.

The rest of their afternoon was a welcome return to relative normalcy. When they were nearly back at the hotel, Jane tugged on Darcy's sleeve to stop her on the sidewalk. "Darce, is he good to you?"

Darcy beamed an absolutely radiant smile. "The best."

* * *

When they got back to SHIELD she went up to Fury's office for just long enough to drop off the stack of scientific journals she was carrying, then went to find Clint. He wasn't with the physical therapist, or in their temporary apartment. She went to the main gym, thinking that he might be doing some shooting, and ran into Natasha outside the locker rooms.

"He's not here." Darcy thought about pointing out that normal people opened conversations with words like 'hello,' then decided that she liked all of her body parts attached. "He was fully cleared this morning and went back to the Tower to wait for you."

"Oh." Darcy was confused. Being cleared ahead of schedule wasn't quite that unusual given the advanced medical technology SHIELD had at its disposal, but it did seem odd that he was using his clearance to hang around the Tower rather than sparring. "Why is he- _oh._"

From the smirk Natasha was giving her, she knew that she had been about thirty seconds away from having the Black Widow give her instructions about her sex life. "Have fun," she murmured, before brushing past Darcy.

Darcy hadn't fully realized how much she had been missing Clint's touch until she was in the back of the cab taking her to the Tower. Her mouth was completely dry and she couldn't make her hands stop shaking.

When the cab pulled up she shoved some bills at the driver and stumbled to the door, fumbling with her keys and the palm and retinal scans. She finally made it up to their suite to find Clint halfway inside the refrigerator, the makings for smoothies out on the counter, and flung herself towards him. He must have heard the door open, because he turned and caught her easily before giving her a heated kiss.

Darcy had a vague thought of going to their bed, or at least to the couch, but before she could vocalize it his fingers were moving along her thighs and then he was _right there_, right where she needed him to be, and hell if she was going to wait another minute.

The first time was fast and just a little rough, both of them needing to take the edge off, and by the end the back of her shirt was soaked from the melting ice cubes from the tray her foot had knocked to the floor.

The second time they did make it to the couch, Clint's hands ghosting all over her body as he stretched things out as long as he possibly could. Clint had never made a secret of the fact that he worshipped Darcy, and that was never more evident than when he decided that he needed to touch and taste every single bit of her.

She dragged him to their bed for a nap before the third time, when she insisted on putting his flexibility to the test to ensure that his ribs were fully healed.

She had some vague notions of round four, and was reaching for him when his phone started to ring. She gave him a pouty face, hoping he would ignore it, but he sighed and said "I'm back on active duty, remember?" before pressing the phone against his ear. "Barton."

She recognized Fury's voice on the other end and sighed deeply. If the Director wanted him for something there was no way he could weasel his way out of it. He was already rolling out of bed, searching for his clothes.

"Yes. Yes, sir, I understand." He hung up the phone and turned to give Darcy a rueful smile. "Wheels up in ten."

"Figures," she huffed, stretching her arms up over her head and smirking when his eyes dropped to her chest. "Although if we're going to celebrate your clean bills of health like this you should get injured more often."

"Darcy," Clint groaned. "This is torture. You're seriously going to send me to fight evil with a hard-on?"

"I'll be here waiting when you get back," Darcy promised.

He took one step back towards the bed when his phone beeped twice, indicating a message from Natasha. "Fuck. I really have to go." He darted towards her, giving her one last kiss. "Get some rest. You're going to have a busy night."

Darcy hugged a pillow to her chest as he jogged out the door. Her life was completely ridiculous, and she loved every second of it.

* * *

The mission took longer than they had anticipated, and Darcy fell asleep on the couch around midnight waiting for him to come home. She woke up when his arms hooked underneath her to carry her to bed. "How'd it go?" she murmured sleepily.

"We got the bad guy and no one really got hurt," he said, setting her down on the bed. "So, success."

"Awesome." She sat up on her elbows, giving him a once-over as he shed his uniform in favor of sweats. "So what's bugging you?"

"Nothing," he answered, just a little too quickly.

"Nice try. What happened? Civilians in the way?"

"No," he sighed, apparently resigned to telling her. "No, it's nothing about the mission. Thor and Steve cornered me in the jet on the way back."

"Ah. I'm guessing they didn't want to talk about throwing Natasha a surprise birthday party?"

Clint barked out a laugh. "No, but maybe we should get them to do that. She hates surprises. We could film her revenge and sell it to TMZ."

"Quit stalling." Darcy threw a pillow at him, which he caught and threw back. "What did they want?"

"They wanted to talk about us, actually. Apparently everyone has decided that we're in a Serious And Committed Relationship, emphasis Steve's."

"Ah. Yeah, Jane gave me a speech at the conference. What did they say?"

"A warning, mostly." Clint slid into the bed next to her, arms reaching for her waist.

"Is that a problem?" Darcy asked into his shoulder.

"Nah. It was just the standard 'break her heart and we'll break your neck' kind of talk, although I don't think I want to know what a bilgesnipe is." He stayed quiet for a moment and Darcy drew patterns on his arm, giving him time to work through his thoughts. "It just kinda hit me that I've never gotten that talk before. I've never really met parents or been taken home for Christmas. You're not the first woman I've had in my life, but this- this might be the first normal relationship I've had."

"I don't know if I would call this entirely normal," Darcy pointed out.

"Fair, but still. I've never thought about forever with anyone else."

"Me neither," Darcy admitted. "Does it scare you?"

"What, forever?" Clint traced one hand over her cheekbone before settling it in her hair. "No. But the idea of losing you is fucking terrifying."

"I'm not planning on getting lost."

"I know." Clint took a deep breath and pushed it out slow, arms tightening around her. "Me neither."

* * *

Live moved on, at what felt to Darcy like a ridiculously fast pace.

She finally finished up her degree, taking a short leave of absence from SHIELD to knock out her last few credits at NYU. She crossed the stage with her diploma to the sound of joyful whoops from the Avengers and a "Fuck yeah, hot stuff!" from Tony. She looked over just in time to see Pepper grab him by the ear, and shook her head. Some things would never change.

Later that year, due to a conveniently-timed lull, she took Clint home for Christmas. They could only be away from SHIELD for a few days, but watching him sip coffee in the Christmas pajamas her mother had bullied him into with wrapping paper stuck to his foot was absolutely worth some crabbing from Fury.

* * *

AN: Very nearly combined this chapter and the next one because they're so short, but plot-wise I like having them separate. In any case, look for the last chapter and the epilogue later tonight!


	10. Chapter 10

AN: Last chapter omg!

* * *

Clint and Darcy could never agree on their anniversary. Their relationship had built up so slowly- they never knew if it should be marked by that first movie night, the first night they kissed, the weekend they went away and barely got out of bed...

Point was, that they had a tendency to talk about the length of their relationship in very general terms, and had what Tony called "anniversary month." Anniversary month usually included lots of really good food and sex whenever they could sneak it in, so Darcy wasn't complaining.

Early on in their third anniversary month, Darcy looked up from the dinner dishes to find Clint making popcorn. "Movie night?" she said hopefully.

"Yep. Go change- I'll meet you in the living room."

When Darcy reappeared in yoga pants and one of Clint's old t-shirts, she was delighted at the menu screen on the TV. "You haven't watched this with me since that first night!" She couldn't suppress the laughter as she snuggled into his side. "Whatever happened to the Stockholm Syndrome creeping you out?"

"Oh, it still does," he assured her. "But since you made it through all of Lost with me I figured this was only fair."

"My hero," she murmured, leaning up to kiss him. Eventually the menu music looped one too many times for his sanity, and he pulled away to find the remote.

"Hopefully if I only watch this every three years it won't make my brain explode," he said cheerfully. "You gonna sing again?"

Darcy grinned. "Probably. Don't lie, you love my voice."

"I do," he said with a sigh.

True to her word, Darcy sang along as Belle fell in love with the Beast, including an improvised dance routine during "Gaston" that had Clint choking on his popcorn in laughter.

When Belle and the Prince danced their way into the closing credits, Darcy hummed contentedly, turning her face into his shoulder. "Thanks for watching it with me," she murmured. "I like stories with happily ever afters."

"Like ours?" He smiled into her hair before extricating himself from her arms, sliding off the couch to kneel on the floor in front of her as one hand went to his pocket.

Darcy stared. "Oh God. _Oh God_. Are you-"

"Shhh, let me do this right," he scolded, finally producing a small velvet box. He took a deep breath and smiled up at her before reaching for her left hand. "Darcy, I love you. You're the most beautiful, amazing person I've ever met." He paused, quickly reaching up to wipe away some of her tears that were already starting to fall. "I can't really promise you any kind of normal life, but I will promise to love you forever. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me." He smiled, her favorite, crooked smile, and asked "Will you marry me?"

Darcy choked out a "Yes" on her way off the couch, knocking him back slightly with the exuberance of her embrace. Clint cradled her in his lap and slipped the ring onto her finger. Darcy took his face in her hands and kissed him, eventually becoming distracted by the unfamiliar pressure of the metal against her third finger. She pulled away slightly and extended her hand, taking her first good look at the ring. It was simple, three small diamonds on a platinum band, but absolutely lovely. Darcy, who didn't typically wear jewelry, knew that she could happily wear it every day for the rest of her life. "It's beautiful," she told him with a wobbly smile. "I absolutely love it." She watched his face relax a little, and asked "Were you actually worried I wouldn't like it?"

"Kind of," he admitted, running his thumb over the ring. "I, ah, actually designed this myself. The diamond in the middle is the one from my mom's engagement ring."

Darcy, who had almost gotten her tears under control, promptly started crying again. She quickly waved away his look of alarm, taking several deep breaths. "I'm fine," she finally said. "This is just... I couldn't have imagined anything more perfect."

* * *

Their wedding was small, understated, and beautiful.

There weren't very many people outside of SHIELD who knew about the Avengers' significant others, to try to keep them from becoming targets, and really Darcy didn't think that she wanted a big wedding, anyway. Tony flew her family and a handful of friends in as a wedding present, and while there wasn't much of an aisle, her dad still got to give his only daughter away.

Clint had made a valiant attempt at talking his way out of a tux, but Darcy insisted. She didn't care about the venue or the flowers, but she was wearing a white gown and damn it, he was going to be next to her in the pictures looking like a groom should. When he got his first glimpse of her as she entered the room, she decided the look on his face had absolutely been worth the fight.

(Three years later, when a picture of their first dance as a married couple spent all four months of a top-secret op in the breast pocket of his fatigues, he decided that she had been right. He may not have actually conveyed that sentiment to Darcy.)

Discounting the presence of all the superheroes, it was a pretty standard affair. Darcy's mother cried through the whole thing, her sons flanking her rolling their eyes. The Avengers looked dashing, if a little out of place in formal civilian clothes. Steve gamely twirled her bridesmaids around the dance floor. Darcy and Clint threw cake at each other, and then ganged up on Tony, who had made a suggestive comment about the use of frosting during sex. Darcy danced with her dad, and her mom stepped in to dance with Clint.

Towards the end of the night Jane bullied Clint out onto the dance floor with her. Near the end of the song she sighed deeply, and when he asked what she was thinking about, she looked over to Darcy and said "Do you ever think about what life would be like if I hadn't hired Darcy? Or if we hadn't opened the bridge?"

"Now I will," he grumbled good-naturedly.

Jane laughed. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that we're all here today." She paused, giving Clint a thoughtful smile. "I just remember Darcy as this kid who came to help me in New Mexico and then I look at the woman she is now, and I can't imagine her being this happy without you."

Clint would never, ever own up to the lump that formed in his throat at her words, so he kissed Jane on the forehead, passed her off Thor, and went to dance with his bride.

* * *

They hadn't planned on getting away on a honeymoon, what with Clint's SHIELD obligations. (Darcy had been a little disappointed at first, but decided that she should just be grateful that nothing happened to ruin the wedding.) Fury apparently had a heart after all, because three weeks after they tied the knot he cleared out a few days for them to get away, with the caveat that they couldn't leave the continental United States.

They joked about going to Disneyworld, or finding his old circus, but instead holed up together in a five-star resort in New Mexico, with room service just as fantastic as Darcy remembered.

On their way back to New York they detoured to Cleveland, stopping to buy flowers before going to a cemetery on the edge of town.

Darcy knelt first, putting down her flowers and brushing her fingers over the tombstone, saying a wordless prayer.

They stood in silence for a long time before Clint put his flowers down next to hers. "Hey, Phil," he said quietly. "Sorry no one's been by lately. Saving the world takes up a lot of our time." He sighed deeply, tracing over the name carved into the marble. "I finally married Darcy. I wish you could have been there." His voice broke a little at the end, and Darcy forced herself to stay back, knowing he needed a minute alone. "The whole team was there. We work together really well now, just like you always said we would."

There was another long pause before Clint rose to his feet, scrubbing the heel of one hand under his eyes. He took a deep breath, and when he turned to face Darcy, the pain was gone from his face, if not quite from his eyes.

Darcy reached for his hand. "Let's go home."

* * *

AN: I really don't know where the Coulson thing came from. I am evidently incapable of having too much uninterrupted fluff.

Just the epilogue left! And it's pure fluff. :-)


	11. Epilogue

Darcy had always thought that she didn't want children.

She realized she had changed her mind when Dr. Reynolds came back in to the examining room and told her that it was a false alarm, she wasn't really pregnant, and she burst into tears.

Dr. Reynolds, who really was one of her favorite people in the world, shooed away the concerned nurse and gave Darcy some water before handing her some pre-natal vitamins and pamphlets. "Just in case," he told her.

Clint came home from a mission three days later, and was incredibly confused when he said hello to Darcy and she burst into tears (again).

"Baby? Darcy, what's wrong?"

The alarm in his voice just made her cry harder, and she sank onto the couch and cried into his chest for a solid ten minutes while he tried not to imagine the worst.

When her sobs turned into hiccups, he gently pulled her away so that he could see her face. "Darcy, I need you to take a deep breath and tell me what's wrong."

Darcy took a deep breath, feeling incredibly stupid, and said "I'm not pregnant."

Clint, to his credit, kept most of the confusion off his face. "Okay. Do you want to be pregnant?"

Darcy groaned. "I don't know! I never wanted to be, but then I thought I was, and I was actually kind of excited about it, but then it was just a false alarm and..." She took another deep breath, coughing a little. "Could you please say something?"

Clint smiled, bringing his thumbs up to brush away her tears. "I love you."

* * *

Darcy's delivery turned out to be pretty anticlimactic.

Pepper had damn near killed Tony both times they had been in the delivery room, and Tony had been gleefully anticipating Darcy's level of snark at Clint when she was in labor. But _no_, Darcy had to be all _zen_ about everything, and dilated so quickly that Tony almost missed the birth announcement because he was out on a food run.

Tony had planned on telling baby horror stories within earshot of Clint, but Clint alternated between typical, first-time-father frazzle and his eerie sniper-level calm, and Tony couldn't tease him in either circumstance because he valued his life too much.

By the time the team was allowed in to see the baby, Tony was pretty cranky. Still, he had to admit they made a pretty cute family. Clint was somewhere between the frazzled and calm stages (which meant he was actually capable of a conversation), and Darcy, mellow from exhaustion and cradling the baby to her chest, looked like some sort of fertility goddess, what with all her curves.

Jane scurried over and ran one finger over the baby's cheek. "She's beautiful. Have you picked a name?"

"Madeleine," Darcy said softly. "Madeleine Alice Barton."

"Maddie Stark," Tony mused. "I like it."

Everyone looked over at him with varying degrees of horror. "What the hell are you talking about?" Steve asked.

"Well you know the public is going to be so disappointed if none of our kids get married, and Baby Barton over there isn't that much younger than Brandon, so clearly it's meant to be," Tony explained, complete with shit-eating-grin.

Natasha slapped her palm into her forehead. Pepper groaned. Clint had murder in his eyes. "Hey!" Darcy snapped, grabbing his arm. "If you get arrested today, I will never forgive you."

Clint sat back down on the edge of the bed. "Fine. How about tomorrow?"

"Why don't we give you some time alone?" Bruce said hurriedly, already shoving Tony into the hallway.

Darcy grinned up at Clint as the room emptied. "You know you want to laugh."

"No I don't," he grumbled. "Like any child of ours would have the bad taste to marry a Stark. A Rogers, maybe, but a Stark?"

"I think we have some time before we need to worry about that," Darcy pointed out. "Besides, you're going to love pulling the overprotective father act, and you know it."

He did laugh a little at that. "Maybe a little." He pressed a kiss onto Darcy's forehead. "You realize that I now have two beautiful women to worry about?"

Darcy leaned up to give him a real kiss. "Yeah, but we're not going anywhere."

**END**

* * *

AN: Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this story, especially if you have reviewed. Those emails always, always make me smile. I still can't believe that this drabble spun into 30,000 words and over 1,000 readers (if the site tracker thingy is accurate). This is my first time posting something longer than a one-shot and it's been a truly lovely experience. :-)

For those who are curious, the baby is named for the Madeleine books and Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass.


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